Gordon Alexander is getting shirty!

“Whilst it is permissible for a player to demonstrate his joy when a goal has been scored, the celebration must not be excessive”.
Fifa – The Laws of the Game: Law 12

I suspect I may be in a minority of about one here, but there is precious little else in our beautiful game that brings out the latent chairmanship of the 1922 Committee in me more than the disgusting spectacle of the goal ruined by some prick celebrating by ripping off their shirt and flashing their nipples to all and sundry.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s a certain art in a classy celebration. Think Ally McCoist’s Corinthian formality when he scored for Kilmarnock against Dunfermline in 2001 and Eric Cantona wondering what the bloody hell was going on every time he chipped a keeper. I’m also quite partial to YouTubing Temuri Ketsbaia taking out his frustration with McDonalds after scoring for Newcastle a few years ago now and again too. But then there was that FA Cup semi-final where Ryan Giggs ran the length of Villa Park naked from the waist up and in so doing triggered a chain-reaction of shitty mimicry that bafflingly persists to this very day.

Ketsbaia. The shirt did come off, but that certainly wasn’t the centrepiece of this display:
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlqCCDh9XT0&w=420&h=315]

Quite why the euphoria of goal-scoring leads to the sudden urge to strip to the waist is truly baffling. Personally speaking, I have only ever taken off my shirt in public once and that was in the moments before a demeaning Doncaster taxi-rank scrap. It was a purely practical measure as I’m not made of shirts and I didn’t want it getting ripped or getting blood (or more accurately, DNA) all over the bloody auction. The whole shirt-shedding is bafflingly unique to football too, this un-Corinthian behaviour thankfully not being replicated by our nation’s jockeys or figure skaters who I suspect enjoy the same endorphin releases as your average Chris Potter when he scrambles home a draw for Hackstaple Town or whatever no-marks are bringing up the rear of The Football League Show.

Why do they do it? I suspect its primarily narcissistic, a display by young peacocks of their immaculate plumage. Desperately seeking attention, any attention, for their upper quartile abs. And neither is it made any more palatable by the unwritten rule that the shirtless berk has to be chased half the length of the pitch by a smattering of colleagues like it’s some kind of lower-rent homo-erotic Benny Hill sketch.

The celebration should be a recognition of the collaborative endeavour. But with the team’s shirt peeled and discarded, the goal is demeaned, it being stripped of its rightful collective meaning both literally and figuratively.

It’s our shirt you shit.

Again, I don’t want to give the impression that I wear a flat cap and take a rattle to the match… but we get up at stupid o’clock in the morning and spend enough over the season to send Scott Brown to the Sorbonne, travelling all across this bleak, shitty little country of ours for the shirt, the badge, the club, the team. You, the player, are merely an ephemeral shirt-filler. You are a mere temp, here until a better offer comes along. We’re not stupid. If someone else comes along and offers you another 3d a week, you’ll go. And we’ll replace you. There’s hundreds of equally as limited players as you on market. You really are nothing special. And don’t you ever forget it.

And then they go and score. Depending on which division you’re in this season, that will either be a common, or a less common event. Rather than recognising that your finish is the culmination of the input of the coaches who’ve coached you, the manager who’s managed and picked you, the supporters who have supported you, and your team-mates who have worked the ball from the back, played it through the midfield and laid it on a plate for you, you have the temerity to rip off that shirt, that shirt that’s emblematic of the collective.

It’s treacherous. A singular display of the worst kind of attention-seeking egoism and a gross disrespect to your support.

Neither will the sponsors be particularly impressed. You know, they only pay your wages, paying bloody good money to have their company name emblazoned on the shirts… only at the apex to have their brand exposure tossed away like a used condom after a knee-trembler with a smack-addled hooker in the strip-lights of a Salamander Street stair.

And these beasts are surprised when they get booked.

It should be a straight-red, a fine of two weeks wages and an automatic three month long loan to Kaunas.

Players have been sent there for less y’know.

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About the Author
Raised by wolves on the wild Lincolnshire coast, Gordon has been Scotland’s 53rd best stand-up comedian for a record six years.

On the scene since 2007, he has been a staple of The Stand’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe programme, performs across the country with his own unique brand of sociopathic misanthropy and biting political comedy and has supported some of the biggest names in UK comedy.

After an unsuccessful football career, culminating in an extra-time defeat in the 1996 U16s Lincolnshire Cup Final, he has been trying unsuccessfully to get a Football Banning Orderfor three years now to stop him spunking any more of his limited disposable income on following his beloved Grimsby Town in the Vauxhall Conference for three years now. He also follows Queen of the South, crack Bundesliga 2 outfit Erzgebirge Aue, Crvena Zvezda and Portland Timbers.

Gordon is a ‘ground-hopper’ and bloody proud of it. His favourite stadia are the Stadio Nereo Rocco in Trieste and the Erzegibrgestadion in Saxony.

“…Character creation Father Alexander was hilarious, taking a satirical lump out of Salmond’s Scotland with a sermon for the Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Ali Al-Megrahi…” Brian Donaldson, The Scotsman

“Gordon Alexander eulogies were a highlight….clever, fun and deserving of a bigger audience” Barrie Morgan, The Skinny

“…Far more polished was Gordon Alexander…It’s a superbly written act and Alexander topped up it’s topicality and was rewarded for his efforts by getting by far the biggest laughs of the night…” Neil McEwan, Edinburgh Evening News

“…Man-of-the-match Gordon Alexander stole the show with his character pieces…” Bernard O’Leary, The Skinny

You can follow Gordon on Twitter: @GoAlexander

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