Selling, sex and the single footballer

THE RECENT rumpus concerning sportswear manufacturer Reebok and what a Manchester barber swept up after Ryan Giggs popped by conveys an important message. It tells us that cutting a dash in football these days is not just about balance, touch and talent. It is also about sex. True, sex wasn't actually mentioned by the Reebok folk who went volcanic because their product's star sponsor had his luxurious locks lopped off after he'd posed for their new catalogue. But neither was their distress because they think the Samson syndrome applies and that the boy wonder's powers will be reduced with the same severity that his mop was. But I suspect the absence of their distress is aesthetic. For now his coiffure is curtailed, young Ryan has ceased to be crumpet.

We could get very lyrical about Giggs's look before the crimpers did their business. With the hair he was waif-like, cherubic, a maestro man-child, a renaissance romantic, a Dionysian dandy, and, oh, let me see, the Red Devils' dazzling dish. Without it he is none of these things. He is just that little chap out by the touchline who couldn't get in a cross against Galatasaray. He is merely a man who plays football. And that is not good enough. That is not why Reebok coughed up a king's ransom to add lustre to their merchandise. You see, filling the role required demands a great deal more than simply being touched with sporting genius. You also have to be instantly recognisable as both object and exemplar of absolute desire.

But then the concept of the soccer star as sexpot - actual or imagined - has always resisted comprehensive commercial exploitation. For a start football clubs do not (yet) pay players for being pin- ups and can be relied on to get nervous about all that extra attention sending their starlet 'off the rails'. And there remains a certain cultural resistance on the part of players themselves to aspects of the image-making process.

Male vanity comes in many forms and footballers are conservative. The older ones cleave to the casual professional look, sartorially appropriate, they hope, for future employment as managers or pundits with the BBC. Younger players cultivate an image which the rag trade's phrase-makers might dub 'Lad With Loot'. Both tendencies are perfectly consistent with the endorsement of shin- guards or the occasional strait- laced fashion shoot, but prohibit excursions to the more stylised shores of masculine iconography. A sweaty John Barnes peeling his kit off and sinking a can of chilled Lucozade is the single exception that comes to mind.

Given their fondness for easy money, players and their agents should consider shedding these inhibitions. There's a vast audience out there craving the kind of carnal arousal only football can truly provide. For instance, thousands of women now commonly express an unmaidenly interest in footballers' physiques. Television is largely to blame. Barely a Football Focus goes by without the significant other in my life observing of Alan Shearer: 'He's a pretty boy, isn't he?' just to take vindictive pleasure in my refusal to agree.

A few years ago I was involved in making a television programme whose producer and director were both women. Seeking a contribution from one of the English game's elder statesmen, they travelled north and secured an audience with him in the physiotherapy room. After showing his guests to a pair of low easy-chairs, the great man made himself comfortable on an elevated treatment bench, wearing just a pair of billowing shorts with nothing underneath. Coaches often complain that players today are lacking in the game's fundamental techniques. It was, then, reassuring to learn from the ladies that their distinguished host lacked nothing when it came to the basic tackle.

The popular association of soccer with sex appeal is recent. Only 30 years ago the game was more thoroughly impregnated with the 19th century high moralism of secular Christianity. Things didn't really change until George Best. He ushered in a social revolution whose full significance remains unrecognised. It's a little known fact that before Best's emergence footballers didn't have sex at all. Pure of mind and body, they were. Showers were cold, hair was short and Roy of the Rovers was a eunuch. Foreplay was five-aside after someone got sent off; intercourse was a tactical talk-in about opponents from Milan.

Then, suddenly, there was Best: Gorgeous Georgie, El Beatle and so on. And before you knew it footballers were having sex constantly. They were having it with bunny girls, model girls, go-go girls, oldest profession girls, film- star girls, Miss World girls, each other's girls, all sorts of girls. Sex with incredible frequency, all over the papers, all over the world. In fact the only sex they didn't have was sex with other blokes. Or so they told us.

IT'S a testament to the social backwardness of the football world that its suspicions of homosexuality remain so vocally expressed. It is tempting to wonder if some of the players don't protest a little too much. Their phobia certainly seens incongruous when you give the matter some thought. All that time they spend together wet and naked. All that rolling about when somebody scores a goal. All that oozing embrocation. You'd have thought at least a few of them would have defiantly paired off to start new lives together in mock- Tudor suburban splendour.

Perhaps their greatest disincentive would be supporters' attitudes. John Fashanu has already suffered as a result of his brother Justin's ground-breaking revelations. Last season at West Ham, the Upton Park faithful mocked:

Score with your brother,

You only score with your brother

Not very funny, especially since the baiting was spiced with racial malice. Also bad for the game. Clubs should be encouraged to take the same steps against this as some of them have against racism. There are already more pink pounds spent at the turnstiles than the football establishment might think, and every effort should be made to tap what could be a lucrative market.

It has been ignored for far too long. A gay friend of mine was only half joking when he told me during Italia '90 that he got a hot flush every time Gary Lineker did something quick and nimble round the box. There is also now a football fanzine for gay fans called The Football Pink. And, as this paper recently reported, the Gay Football Supporters' Network has compiled a 'Lust List'.

Giggs got in at No 6, though the top slot went to his team-mate Lee Sharpe. The co-existence in this popularity poll of such different types as Vinnie Jones (No 7) and Jamie Redknapp (No 2) is a testament to the polymorphic sexual tastes humanity generates. Who knows what kind of upheaval the network's initiative may have started? Imagine a future mass exodus from locker-room closets; Iain Sproat resigning in confusion; PFA banners gladly disported among the leather men and lesbians at the annual Pride march; match programmes enlivened by some of the the Premiership's finest preened, posed and photographed in the style of Robert Mapplethorpe. There might even be a few quid in it.

Peter Corrigan is on holiday