Terence Blacker: It's not the players, it's their followers

As from this week, the word "shame" is likely to be appearing with increased regularity in the national newspapers. The Premier League football season starts on Saturday, and the national team will be in action on Wednesday. Already the predictable shame-based, football-related stories are beginning to appear in the press.

This weekend the England manager, Fabio Capello, was interviewed and, according to the papers, expressed regret (make that "shame") for the World Cup failure (make that "disgrace") of himself and his players (make that "the team that broke a nation's heart"). Elsewhere, on an altogether humbler scale, there was the inevitable sex story. The gangly Spurs striker Peter Crouch's moment of shame occurred when it was claimed in a Sunday paper he had enjoyed a quick olé, not once but twice (back of a taxi, then a hotel room) with a Spanish prostitute while at a stag party in Madrid.

Those who moan about the moral decline of football like to complain about those who play it professionally. On the pitch, the modern player is said to be dishonest, petulant and either not committed enough or too committed. Off it, he is greedier, more pampered, vainer and randier than his noble forbears.

In fact, given the celebrity madness and the money which is now part of Premier League football, it is odd that players have not changed more. They have always had egos, been unreliable and moody, have been drunk at the wrong times, and have found themselves in bed with the wrong women. They are young, well off, fit and the object of attention from those who can offer fun and temptation; what else would you expect?

On the other hand, the effect of this new, glossy, jetset style of football on those who watch it and comment on it has been disastrous. The modern game has brought out the very worst in our national character.

We habitually delude ourselves, for example, that our national team is better than it is, and then rage pathetically when that absurd optimism is confounded, searching angrily for someone to blame. Consistent with previous setbacks, the England team's performance in the World Cup this summer was a disappointment, an under-performance, but only a nation whose collective brain has been addled by over-expectation would attach the word "shame" to it.

Shrewdly, Capello has played the media game, delivering the obligatory apology, but, like his predecessor, he must quietly wonder to himself at the oddness, the proneness to emotional hysteria, of the nation whose team he now manages. Much of the emotionally dysfunctional attitude towards the players themselves comes from the same source – envy. Peter Crouch is hardly the first young Englishman to have misbehaved, even twice, in a sozzled moment at a stag party, and yet, according to the stern moralists of the media (who of course would never dream of doing such a thing), he deserves the kind of sanctimonious scolding in which the British press specialises.

Sex-and-football stories are published to titillate sexually frustrated readers, but that hardly explains or excuses the level of moral disapproval. Few of us, given the opportunities on offer to Premier League footballers, would reach for the smelling-salts and run away. Once one remembers that jealousy, that most familiar and under-estimated of vices, is behind much of what is written and spoken about football, then the emotion and the nastiness become easier to understand.

It is a sport. When a team loses, even unexpectedly, it is not a national scandal or a matter for shame. Those who play it are humans; it is absurd to expect them to behave like members of the Synod of the Church of England. In English football, it is not the managers and the players who are on a terrible slide into moral decay. The problem is with those who watch them, torn between adoration and envy, loyalty and resentment.

Gorillas have no place in captivity

Thumping his chest, a silverback of the London Zoo management has announced that, after the premature deaths of two male lowland gorillas, another is to be imported. "Without a doubt, seeing a gorilla will rank as one of the most breathtaking moments in a person's life," zoological director, David Field, has said.

He is almost right, but has carefully omitted three key words: "in the wild". It is indeed a truly moving and awe-inspiring experience to see these extraordinary creatures in their natural habitat. Looking at them in a zoo is as different as it could possibly be. It makes one faintly ashamed to be a human being.

The eye of a gorilla is expressive. Gorillas in the wild who've been habituated to human presence will glance at them with a patient, slightly superior air. Those in captivity express only the misery of boredom. Apart from the money-making business of providing entertainment for humans, there are two arguments for this cruelty, and both are feeble. One is that breeding in captivity has a conservation purpose for endangered mountain and lowland gorillas.

The truth is that no gorilla used to life in captivity can be introduced into the wild. Significantly, the gorillas kept in London Zoo have reproduced only once over the past 22 years. What we are essentially doing is producing a sub-species, bred exclusively for human amusement. Some would say extinction would be preferable. London Zoo boasts that 10 per cent of the £5.3m budget for its Gorilla Kingdom goes towards conservation on the ground. In other words, nine-tenths of their cash goes towards imprisoned rather than wild gorillas.

The real message provided to visitors by places like Gorilla Kingdom is simple, reassuring and profoundly harmful: even the most magnificent of animals exist for the diversion of our own superior species.

terblacker@aol.com