I can forgive Hand of God but nor Hair of Wadd

By Brian Reade

Published 22:58 24/06/11

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On the 25th anniversary of The Hand Of God, Chris Waddle claimed most English football fans would never forgive Maradona.

But time's a healer and his second goal in that game was arguably the greatest ever, which is why I think most fans have forgiven him.

Though whether they can look back and forgive a woeful mullet hair-cut, a hideous duet on Top Of The Pops with Glenn Hoddle or that lamentable Pizza Hut advert which saw England players making light of missing crucial penalties with thin crust pepperoni dangling from their mouths, is another matter.

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One of the many things I hate about modern football is the absence of gardening accidents.

Back in the day when the newspapers wrote as much about players' off-the-pitch activities as they did about the Queen's gynecological reports, gardening accidents were very common.

Your veteran defender sports a pair of black eyes? He wasn't involved in a drunken 3am brawl, he stood on a rake. Star striker out for a couple of weeks with a broken arm? It wasn't twisted up his back by gambling debt collectors, he fell out of his hammock.

Today, due to saturation coverage of their lives there's no chance of a gardening story. Unless you live in Germany. In which case you'll be reading this tale right now:

"Kaiserslautern striker Adam Nemec will be out of action for three months as he recovers from injuries sustained when he fell out of a cherry tree in his garden.

"The 25-year-old Slovak fractured two vertebrae and his collarbone as well as suffering concussion. He will undergo an operation on the collarbone injury."

The more I read about how the Bundesliga refuses to bow to the modern era, the more I envy the Germans.

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After pointing out last week that Frank Lampard may struggle for his place this season under a new manager, a Chelsea fan emailed to liken my words to human testes.

"Frank has had a troubled time of late both in his personal life and with an injury which make him miss more games than he's ever done for us," he wrote on Sunday. "It hasn't helped with different managers changing the system neither. All it needs is for the likes of Guus Hiddink to come in and put a fatherly arm around him and the boy will be back to his best."

Well, as we now know, it's Andre Villas-Boas, not Hiddink, who's Chelsea's new man. And as we also know, he's 33. The same age as Frankie.

So I doubt you'll see a fatherly arm. More a brotherly one. Giving him a regular hook.

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