Why does football arouse powerful displays of emotion if it is only a game? Why do people live and die for it? 1
Guilty pleasures From one particular angle, I can’t bring myself to be too harsh with Tonio Fenech, our Harry Potter-look-alike finance minister who has created a lot of trouble for himself by accepting an invitation to watch Arsenal play in Spain in the company of some big hitters. And that angle – football – is the angle I wish to discuss here. Unlike other columnists, I won’t go into the nuances of whether what he did was ‘improper’, ‘dishonest’, ‘suspect’, ‘unethical’, ‘naïve’ or simply ‘plain stupid’. I won’t discuss whether the whole story is nothing more than ‘a storm in a tea-cup’ as Lino Spiteri put it rather dismissively, or whether this is really serious stuff we’re talking about.
“Don’t I have a right to watch Arsenal play?” the beleaguered minister pleaded with The Times’ Kurt Sansone. And for about 90 minutes after uttering that endearing school-boy style defence, Tonio Fenech became, in my eyes, the human face of Maltese politics, the boy-next-door football fan who would do all kinds of naughty things for the thrill of watching his favourite team play for real.
Tonio the Arsenal fan prevailed over Joseph the born-again progressive in the likeability, touchy-feely political stakes: I had given Fenech a sei and Muscat a cinque virgola cinque. Before learning, that is, that the Nationalist player had performed the umpteenth hard tackle on this newspaper. The rules of this ridiculous libel game are truly crying out to be scrapped.
But let’s get back to the beautiful game. Apart from timpana, football is the down-to-earth, pragmatic Maltese man’s greatest guilty pleasure. And in a world in which even our own politicians spend their mornings punishing themselves on the treadmill, football becomes the last haven of joy in an otherwise fairly humdrum trajectory of eżamijiet, familja and Knisja.
So it’s perhaps emblematic that while an interest in beautiful women continues to get politicians elsewhere (from Profumo to Clinton to Spitzer to Berlusconi, and now Sarkozy) into all sorts of tight spots, a young Maltese finance minister by the name of Tonio Fenech risks being felled by
nothing more than the tantalising prospect of watching his favourite team play in the Champions League.
His heartfelt, repeat references to his ‘clean conscience’ and ‘committed Christianity’ are annoying – you can always rely on Maltese politicians to remind you of their clean, Catholic soul when they find themselves in a spot of trouble. And you can shake them off as a more or less flimsy attempt at defence. Just think for a minute what an effect those references would have on a Maltese audience, if Fenech replaced ‘committed Christian’ with ‘committed Muslim’? But the religious references support my point that if there’s one sin that your God-fearing Maltese family- man will give into time and time again, it’s got to be football. Not sex, not passion, not drink, not drugs and certainly not disco (incidentally, does anyone remember Italy’s “disco-dancing” Gianni De Michelis?)
My take on the Tonio Fenech affair is that we should give some thought to the football aspect of this controversy, in particular the fact that this was his favourite team playing. Had his businessmen pals tempted the finance minister with a couple of pole-dancers on that private jet and a retinue of veline in some luxury Spanish resort, my guess would be that the man would have simply turned down the offer and saved himself the hassle of being caught more or less in flagrante. And people who are surprised that the Prime Minister appears to have given Fenech his clearance to travel to Spain to watch Arsenal should remember that Lawrence Gonzi is a big football fan himself. My hunch is that Gonzi (who’d probably list the Meazza as his second favourite religious shrine) couldn’t quite bring himself to deny his minister the special treat of watching his team play live. The Prime Minister supports Inter, but I suppose that that’s about as relevant to this piece as the fact that I root for the giallorossi.
At this juncture it’s probably worth reminding readers of the plight of David Mellor, the former Tory minister who, in 1992, was embroiled in a kiss-and-tell-scandal which involved an actress called Antonia De Sancha. The conservative politician dressed from head to toe in his favourite team’s football kit. In case you’re wondering, David Mellor supported Chelsea F.C.
Mortal sins
A final point. Does rounding on Tonio Fenech the individual minister because of his decision to watch Arsenal play in the company of George Fenech and Joe Gasan make much sense when we’re well aware of the fact that the two political juggernauts in this fair land are bankrolled by big business? Coherence would demand that this case should be used as a platform to launch an aggressive campaign for complete transparency in political party financing. Will the governing party take up the challenge or will this controversy prove to be another case of suffarelli followed by business as usual?
1 Peter Pericles Trifonas, Umberto Eco and Football: Icon Books, 2001
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Unlike other columnists, I won’t go into the nuances of whether what he did was ‘improper’, ‘dishonest’, ‘suspect’, ‘unethical’, ‘naïve’ or simply ‘plain stupid’. I won’t discuss whether the whole story is nothing more than ‘a storm in a tea-cup’ as Lino Spiteri put it rather dismissively, or whether this is really serious stuff we’re talking about. 
