SEAN, I UNDERSTAND YOU
Women now make up 13 per cent of Sean Bean's wife was never one of them
THE FUTURE of British football is once again under threat, thanks to the behaviour of a group of saboteurs. Their trouble-making is stopping peaceful, well- behaved fans from enjoying the game. I refer to the wives and girlfriends of foot- ball supporters across the country. Fed up with being abandoned while their menfolk watch the match, they are prepared to ruin the game for the rest of us with their whingeing and nagging.
Last week, a television actress called Melanie Hill announced that her marriage to the film star Sean Bean was over. 'I'm sick of it and I want out,' she told newspa- per reporters. At the root of the Beans' marital problems is Mr Bean's obsessive support of his native team Sheffield Unit- ed, otherwise known as the Blades. 'We only had one night's honeymoon because of a United game,' complained the actress. `In fact he nearly missed the wedding because of football.' When the actor is `resting' he does little round the house because he is too busy watching football. When he is away filming and Sheffield United are playing, he telephones his wife and gets her `to tune the radio to a report of the match and then put the receiver next to it, so that he can hear a bit of it'.
Both the press and Mr Bean's wife would have us believe that he is nothing but a football lout who likes beer. This is a man who spends most of, if not all, his free time following football, a man 'who drops his clothes on the floor', who has '100 per cent Blade' tattooed on his shoulder. He once said that scoring for the Blades dur- ing an FA Cup final would be better than sex. He has also vowed that no matter how successful he became he would never move to Hollywood because of his love of football and beer.
Had Bean come from Milan instead of Sheffield, he would by now have become a national hero. For in Italy there is nothing yobbish about football — it is something to be proud of. It is one of their greatest exports, a sport that is not thought to be working class, as it is in Britain, but one to which opera singers will readily attach themselves. It would be Signora Bean's nag- ging which would be seen as unreasonable.
But over here Mrs Bean has emerged from this tale radiant. The press have hailed Mrs Bean as a 'football widow', a martyr at the hands of a yob. She has been left holding the baby and the laundry, and we are supposed to pity her as a woman whose husband has abandoned her, not for another woman, but for a whole foot- ball team. Had she been left by Bean for some buxom Bond girl from the set of his latest film, Goldeneye, she would have my sympathy. As it is, I have little time for the whinings of Mrs Bean and her ilk.
The football widow would, if she had her way, drag her man kicking and screaming out of the pub and into an apron on a Saturday afternoon. In her ideal world there would be no sport, no pints and no 'blokes', just a master race of doting Stepford husbands.
I fear the day. I would rather spend my `They can be very moody – sometimes they hit you with a large stick and other times if you are covered in oil they clean and feed you.' Saturday afternoon slumped on the sofa in front of a match with a bloke and a can of lager than down the aisles of Sainsbury's Home Base, with Mr New Man pushing my trolley. For just as they say you shouldn't trust a man who wears a cardigan, there is something terribly suspicious about a man who doesn't know who is top of the Pre- mier League. I always find it very reassur- ing to see photographs of Mr Major at Stamford Bridge. But many women equate loving football with being a lout. Were Mr Bean to be as obsessive about opera or bal- let as he is about soccer, would anyone care? Would we be reading reports about how he spent all his free time at the Opera House drinking champagne? I think not.
The problem here is that women like Mrs Bean are uneducated in the art of football. They should be addressing their grievances to the Secretary of State for Education rather than nagging their husbands. You see, these women have spent their formative years pounding the gravel on the netball court. Netball is a redundant, unattractive sport they cannot follow later in life. Men learn to love football from an early age: most of their childhood is spent dribbling a foot- ball round the back yard. But most women are unfamiliar with football and all that goes with it until they enter a relationship. Then they either they end up like Mrs Bean, hat- ing the game, resenting the fact that there is any other passion in their man's life but themselves, or they learn to love it.
My own affair with the game began during the 1990 World Cup, when I developed an inexplicable crush on the rodent-like 'Rob- bie' Baggio. A year later, I ended up sharing a flat with three men and a television tuned to little else but football. From then on I was addicted. Now every Saturday without fail I wake up to Football Italia, which is followed by Football Focus. And I have been known to leave parties early in order to make it home for Match of the Day.
And it seems I am not alone in my pas- sion for the sport. Last year the FA announced that 13 per cent of the fans at matches are now women. This is good news for the future of British football. A greater following means a greater revenue for the game. As a result, the FA launched an advertising campaign directed specifically at women, and clubs all over the country have begun to doll themselves up for the girls. Indeed, Highbury stadium, home to the Gunners, looks like a shopping mall these days.
If British football is to succeed interna- tionally, then the likes of Mrs Bean would do well — in the parlance of the terraces — to keep their traps shut. To be a football fanatic is nothing to be ashamed of. She should be thankful that her husband has, despite his fame, stayed loyal to his background and upbringing, and not abandoned Sheffield United. Sean Bean's support of his team is to be admired, not admonished. But should the couple part, I would be more than willing to accompany Mr Bean onto the terraces.
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