Fraudulent Football

Petty bickering is an inevitable accomplice of football fandom. Something that is only perpetuated by the festering cave of small minded arguing that is social media, going over and over on a constant basis.

One of the more dreary insults to come out of this pit of despair is to label somebody as a fraud.

According to Google, fraud can be defined as “a person or thing intended to deceive others, typically by unjustifiably claiming or being credited with accomplishments or qualities.”

In the petrified forest of football ‘banter’ accounts’ Twitter feeds, it is used as a term to diminish someone’s achievements - player or manager. That there achievements are unjust and undeserved, and that general discourse around them is misguided.

Pep Guardiola is often a target, with the term ‘Fraudiola’ even addressed (somewhat unwisely) by the man himself in a press conference.

It is incredulous that some people have suggested that the Catalan’s achievements are somehow irrelevant, or unworthy. The man has helped produce brilliant football, won a heap of trophies and been a significant influence on the development of top level football in recent years.

Yes, the video that went round of Rochdale scoring a goal after a fine passing move and crediting Guardiola’s direct influence was over the top, but his general influence on the game cannot be denied.

There are those who take fandom around certain figures too far, and in a cyclical process there are many who take critique too far.

Yes, Guardiola has worked with top level players. But he’s been playing against other sides with top level players, and managed to get the better of them.

Perhaps he would struggle at a smaller club with lesser players to implement his philosophy, but that’s no reason to demean him is a manager. Just a reason to admire managers who work well with a budget in a different way.

You wouldn’t expect Sergio Aguero to excel trying to do what Matt Rhead does. But the Argentine’s lack of ability as a target man (and lack of willingness to elbow players) doesn’t make him the lesser footballer.

And managers aren’t the only ones to get slapped with the fraud tag. Utterly incredulously, a Twitter thread went round recently claiming to be exposing Thierry Henry.

It beggars belief that someone could hold such a misguided belief, and carry it out with such vindication as to write a series of posts on it.

The main argument centred on his lack of goals in ‘big games’ against ‘big teams’. A perfectly logical statistic - it’s not shocking or surprising that a striker would struggle to score quite as many goals against teams with better defenders.

It’s a take down for the sake of a take down, a misguided and thick attempt at doing a hot take.

We currently live in an environment where everything has to be an extreme. Someone is either a god or a fraud. There is a complete lack of middle ground.

The likes of Guardiola, Henry and many many more should be admired for their achievements. And while that doesn’t mean that they can’t be critiqued or questioned, this current obsession with bringing people down is ludicrous.