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Your support makes all the difference.IN THE last of his 63 years, the famed and abrasive American sportswriter Jimmy Cannon made a statement about this trade that I have earnestly endeavoured to follow. Crippled by a stroke but still hard and brave, Cannon said: "Sportswriting has survived because of the guys who don't cheer."
What Cannon had in mind was the worthy principle that for sportswriting and broadcasting to have any relevance at all it must conform to the golden rule of objectivity.
Defining the present is a tricky business but the perspective of some who occupy the press and commentary boxes today seems closer than ever before to that of supporters, leaving them just as vulnerable to the effect of winning or losing.
This was particularly evident last week in a crass remark delivered by the ITV football commentator Clive Tyldesley after Manchester United's quite sensational victory over Bayern Munich in the European Cup final in Barcelona.
When television cut to a shot of Bayern's veteran captain Lothar Matthaus - to my mind the most desolate of many sporting images - Tyldesley posed the rhetorical question of what was going through the German's mind. Then he offered a perfunctory, insensitive dismissal. Tyldesley crowed: "Who cares?"
I cared. Anyone who has a feel for sport should have cared. There was one of the great players of his generation facing up, at 38, to the probability that his career would pass without winning the European Cup. A player who had given everything. If Tyldesley takes pleasure in the remark, he should be ashamed of himself.
As much sympathy was felt here for Matthaus as was felt for England's footballers when they were put out of the 1970 World Cup finals by West Germany. As much as for Muhammad Ali when, with nothing left but pride, he was stopped by Larry Holmes in an ill-advised attempt to become the four-times heavyweight champion. As much as for Greg Norman when he let a six-shot lead slip to Nick Faldo and it cost him the Masters.
You can go on and on like this. The tears shed by Charlie Cooke when England lost narrowly to Brazil in 1970. "Being Scottish doesn't come into it," Cooke said. "It's knowing what those guys gave that makes you weep for them." Who, with any proper sense of sporting endeavour, could fail to sympathise with the Netherlands when they lost to Argentina in the 1978 World Cup final? With England when they were put out of last summer's finals by Argentina in a penalty shoot-out after holding out with 10 men for more than an hour?
The medium is the message. And now the message that filters through the media is all too clear. It speaks of bias and jingoism and closer affiliations than any of the people I learned from allowed themselves.
Michael Owen's marvellous World Cup goal against Argentina last summer brought so many English football writers to their feet that the business of reporting football appeared to have changed beyond all recognition.
The output of sportswriters and broadcasters should not be subject to whim, pressures from advertisers, demands for ratings and circulation, passion for attention and other events of the day.
It should be covered as seen, not from any personal or national perspective. "I know that if we win some of our people are going to say, `We have beaten the world', a German journalist called Ulrich Kaiser told Hugh McIlvanney before the 1966 World Cup final. "I hate that. I will not have beaten the world. Eleven German footballers will have beaten 11 from England to win a cup. I will not have beaten anybody."
It was once said of the American writer John Lardner that the heroes in his world were "gamblers who fleeced innocents, ball players whose ignorance sang, and prizefighters who attempted to father a large portion of the country. There was no question of these heroes having feet of clay - the clay ran up to the waist."
As a policy for covering sport, those words are worth more than idle attention.
Among the issues at stake at Wembley on Saturday, when England come up against Sweden in a qualifier for the European Championship, will be that of Kevin Keegan's long-term future as England coach.
Yes, that quickly. It is the way sports coverage now works. Win and there is cheering in the press box. Lose and the honeymoon is over.
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