After the Argentine tit disgraced football on Tuesday evening with his refusal to play the Cutter decided to launch its very own Anti-Tevez Awards to show there are still some good eggs in the game. The scabby-necked saboteur may be grabbing all the headlines but these guys have something he will never again have – Joe Public’s respect and admiration.
The Model Pro
James Milner – Always puts in an honest shift no matter where he is employed and never gripes about being played out of position even when it affects his performance and standing amongst the fans. Jimmy Milner is a chunk of granite from the old-skool – he could almost be a cover star of a 1950’s Tiger comic – and somewhere in the annals of the net resides a glorious photograph of the Man City squad training last year in arctic conditions. Whilst everyone else was huddled up in thick layers, gloves and bobble hats our Jimmy sported nowt else but a short-sleeved top, shorts and rolled down socks. Makes you proud dammit.
Jimmy proudly holds aloft his award which we made to resemble his club shirt.
The Lifetime Achievement Award
Shaun Derry – A distinguished sixteen year career spent mainly in the top two divisions and yet most would struggle to recall his name if top midfielders from the modern era were being discussed. Derry have unfailingly given blood, sweat and tears for every club he’s represented – scooping up a clutch of Supporter’s Player of the Season Awards in the process – and he’s routinely gone about it in a dignified under-stated fashion. No easy feat considering his combative role. Type ‘Shaun Derry controversy’ into Google and do you know what comes up? Nothing. Type ‘under-rated’ and you know what comes up? Well, not Derry but I feel I’ve made my point regardless. Take a bow Shaun. What my dad would call a ‘proper footballer’.
The Humanitarian Award
Craig Bellamy – While the tabloids delight in Beller’s predilection for wielding golf clubs at team-mates and being a generally gobby sort there is much, much more to a man who once riled Shearer enough with abusive texts that the human plank of wood threatened to ‘knock his block off’.
The Craig Bellamy Foundation runs Sierra Leone’s only professional football academy and league. When the player visited a friend there in 2007 he was overwhelmed with how much passion the kids had for football yet was deprived of even the most basic of facilities.
A year later the Welshman spent the entire close season there (against the wishes of Liverpool who refused to insure him travelling to the war-torn area) and has thus far given close to a million pounds of his own money to ensure his dream comes to fruition. That is the true measure of the man. That’s what some people won’t – or refuse – to see.
This is no vanity project either. As Bellers has said, he is in it ‘until I’m a very old man’.
Kudos must go to Phil Neville too for his incredible work raising money for the Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital and for being the brother of Ratboy yet somehow not being a total c***
The Loyalty Award
Ledley King – Despite his injury woes do you really think, even now, any number of clubs wouldn’t be snapping Harry’s greasy fingers off if King became available? But he never has and never will. Ledley is the modern-day Gary Mabbutt – a one-club man who is the yin to Sol Campbell’s yang. He has made untold sacrifices for a cause he truly believes in – Tottenham Hotspur – jeopardising his long-term well-being in the process yet never seeking sympathy or attention. The class he radiates on the pitch obviously comes from within.
The Perseverance Award
Emile Heskey – 99% of Emile’s contemporaries – many of whom were always given far more respect and credit – have now either fallen down through the divisions or are retired, sitting on their big mountain of cash. Yet seventeen years after he first bustled his way past a defender only to then either a/ fall over or b/ blaze a skyward shot into row z Ivanhoe is still at it week in, week out at the highest level. His love of playing the game cannot be disputed to the point where, if ever he flatly refused to leave his plump seat in the dug-out Alex McLeish would be looking around for the hidden cameras of a new prank show.
The Class Act Award
Michel Salgado – Anyone who reads his monthly FourFourTwo column will know that Salgado is a self-deprecating erudite bloke who gives fans the respect of talking to them with refreshing candidness. Shame about the dodgy jeans-and-shirt combo but that aside an all-round top fella.
The One Of Us Award
Jamie Carragher – There’s been numerous examples over the years of Carra going above and beyond his call of duty and integrating himself with the Anfield faithful. From his involvement with the Free Michael Shields campaign to personally paying the flight fare home of a stranded red abroad he, like Salgado and all the others mentioned above, respects what it takes to follow a team home and away. He gets it because if he wasn’t a player he would be in the stands himself.
