There's an email circulating at the moment in which a QPR fan lambasts everything he hates about football today. Runs to about two pages and just scratches the surface but is highly entertaining. If I wasn't such an IT numpty there'd be a link right here...
Anyway, lolling on the sofa tonight with half an eye on the United v City semi final I sat bolt upright at another example. Stephen Ireland, preparing to come on as sub, peeled off his shirt to reveal... a huge pair of angel's wings tattooed across his back.
I repeat - angel's wings across his back.
Either the combative City midfielder is in fact heralding the Second Coming, or it's a new chapter in what the modern player is prepared to undergo to establish inky bragging rights in the changing room. Because that can only be the motivation for ever more ludicrous skin scribbling - my tat's bigger than yours.
In the school playground culture of football, garish body decoration is the new Page Three bird or flash car. Pretty soon even the humblest semi pro will be decked out like a Maori warrior with little thought for later life, when a dark shrivelled smudge will remind them of bygone days.
Yet even as tats spread like an epidemic across the torsos, lower legs and arms of the nation's footballing finest, there's an odd reluctance to go beyond the collar line or wrist. Come on boys, who among you is man enough to have the Virgin Mary or their girlfriend's name in Mandarin emblazoned across their forehead. Or even sell the naming rights so that every firmly planted header has TOYOTA behind it.
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