Adam Johnson was a football player.
He got paid to play football in one of the biggest leagues in the world. He was an international football player. He was a rich football player.
Adam Johnson was found guilty of sexual activity with a child.
They’re not related.
However deplorable you think it is that men could get paid millions upon millions to kick a ball around, they are not related. Not even if you want them to be.
Oliver Brown, a writer with The Telegraph, penned a genuinely disconcerting article on Thursday. It read: Adam Johnson is an emblem of football’s broken soul.
“Adam Johnson is a monster of football’s own making,” he wrote. “The former Sunderland player’s own counsel described him as ‘immature, arrogant, promiscuous.’ Throw in a weekly wage of £60,000 and there was a recipe for such adulation to be abused.”
As sweeping generalisations go, this is as ill-advised and as dangerous as they come.
To link a stomach-churning crime like Johnson’s in any way to the thousands of professional footballers who have dedicated their lives to making it in their sport was honestly sickening.
Yes, some of them get paid shit loads of money. Yes, some of them have copious amounts of free time. And, heck, yes, even some of them are treated too well, given too many free passes and bye balls. But to lay society’s problems at football’s door because you don’t like the lifestyle they get to lead is completely unfair.
To lay the problem’s of one sick young man at football’s door, and all the players and good guys that it inhabits, is just bang out of order.
In 2012/13, there were 23,000 recorded cases of sexual offences on children in England and Wales alone. Recorded offences.
There’s been what – one similar conviction of a professional footballer?
There’s no defending the former Sunderland player, none whatsoever. But any prosecution of him, any slandering of him should have absolutely nothing to do with the fact that he played football.
Of all those recorded cases, how many jobs or wages were linked to the offence? How many times was infidelity and promiscuity related to a livelihood?
The problems and controversies in the football world are hardly significantly deviating from society’s curve.
If a journalist was convicted of sexual activity with a child, would that have exposed journalism’s broken soul too? If a teacher was found to be a paedophile, is it okay to suddenly generalise the rest of them in that bracket as well? If an electrician dabbled in drugs, can we put that down to the dark side of the job?
Of course we couldn’t. They’re not related.
“Gambling, alcoholism and sex are the trinity of evils waiting to ensnare the unwary footballer kicking his heels.”
Oliver Brown isn’t saying that all footballers are guilty footballers but he’s certainly suggesting that offences like Johnson’s – and, Jesus, addictions like drinking and gambling too – are a product of the football lifestyle.
It’s easy to do that, you see. Scarily.
It’s easy to hate overpaid footballers. It’s easy to envy a young man’s out-of-touch existence. It’s easy to throw stones at the big, bad football monster that happens to generate a lot of money because people are willing to pay a lot of money for it.
Is it so easy to lump in alcohol and gambling with sexual activity with a child?
Is it so easy to link football to any of that?
Is it so easy to throw a game under the bus for one man’s horrible actions? The rest of the players along with him?
It shouldn’t be. It shouldn’t be allowed.
Adam Johnson was a football player.
Adam Johnson was found guilty of sexual activity with a child.
But Adam Johnson did not commit a grievous crime because of what job he had. He did it because he’s a criminal.
They’re not related.
And, do you know what, we’re not only doing football an injustice by trying to hold it to blame for this.
We’re doing an injustice to every other victim of child sex offences all over the world.
That ignorance is the most frightening prospect of it all.
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