Call for respect rings hollow as big hitters show contempt

PREMIER LEAGUE:Any initiative by the Premier League calling for more respect is going to struggle for credibility

RESPECT. YOU haven't been able to move for the stuff this summer. Listening to the game's lawmakers and deal breakers launch football's latest campaign for courtesy at a swanky London club a fortnight ago was like sitting at the counter of Aretha Franklin's all-singing, all-dancing diner in The Blues Brothers. The only difference was that the chorus-line of blazered types in Covent Garden had slightly bigger hair.

Then again, having Aretha as a poster girl would at least have given the FA's campaign a pinch of credibility.

It is difficult to see how standards of decorum are suddenly going to sky-rocket when the only meaningful initiative seems to be asking purple-faced players to wait until the match official is out of ear shot before calling him a "c***".

We all know how these campaigns go by now. There will be a few weeks where our Premier League super-stars bite their forked tongues, mindful of having Sky's hi-motion cameras trained on every fleck of phlegm, before we all get side-tracked by something of real significance, like Cristiano Ronaldo's diamond-encrusted plaster-cast or Emmanuel Adebayor enrolling in Catalan classes at the University of North London.

Besides, any initiative calling for more respect is going to struggle for credibility when the real big-hitters in English football persist in treating everyone and everything with such unbridled contempt.

The Premier League, after all, is an organisation which not only allows a man accused of Enron-scale corruption and manifold human rights violations to bankroll one of its oldest clubs with the dollars (allegedly) pilfered from his own people, but then dithers over subjecting him to a "fit and proper person" test when he flees his home country to seek asylum in England.

The Thaksin Shinawatra affair has been by far the most unedifying spectacle of the sporting summer - aside from that little gathering in Beijing, of course, where the local law enforcers have done their utmost to convince the IOC that brutal suppression of free speech and political protest should be an Olympic sport in its own right - but at least the Premier League can claim it has simply been taking its lead from its shareholders.

To recap, we have seen Manchester United and Portsmouth accept the dubious honour of an invitation to the Tinapa Invitational Soccer Fiesta, a mini-tournament held in the Nigerian city Abuja, where the local die-hards - you know, the ones that are desperate for an up-close glimpse of their heroes, according to Premier League chief executive Richard Scudamore - were effectively barred from the stadium thanks to a ticket pricing policy which made Arsenal's €114 seats look pat-your-backside good value. The inevitable riots, by the way, delivered far more entertainment than the two palpably uninterested teams, who couldn't have been less on-message had they taken to the field wearing "39th Game, My Arse" T-shirts.

Then we have the perennially clownish Newcastle United, whose idiocy took a more sinister turn when their apparently decent decision to dispense with the odious Joey Barton - who spent most of the close season languishing at Her Majesty's Pleasure - was overturned as soon as they realised they might earn a few quid from selling him to some hapless mug.

It is all thoroughly depressing, and that's without mentioning the squirm-inducing badge-kissing of Adebayor, a mere fortnight after he had confirmed his intention to leave Arsenal, or the galactico-sized gall of Frank Lampard, who pledged unwavering fidelity to the Chelsea brand once the club had caved in to his demands for a five-year contract worth €177,615-a-week.

All of these distinctly unlovable rogues are surely more suitable targets of a crash course in respect than players whose only crime is to accuse a match official of indulging in a spot of auto-erotica. But given the Premier League's history of turning a wilfully blind eye to any behaviour which appears, to all rational observers at least, to drag the game into disrepute, nobody is holding their breath.

Things aren't all bad, and some denizens of Planet Football have retained a shred of integrity. Aston Villa, for one, have given a local children's hospice, Acorns, free shirt sponsorship for the new season, which not even Gareth Barry will resent wearing.

And on an opening weekend which was, for the most part, ponderously predictable, there were at least two heart-warming sights: a first-ever top-flight win for Hull, a club trapped in the Football League basement five years ago, and a breathless debut victory for the Premier League's first black British manager, Paul Ince.

It doesn't make up entirely for the summer's litany of sins, but at least it proves that green shoots can sprout in even the deepest cess-pools.