Spitting is unpleasant. It’s best that we get that out of the way at the top.
Spitting at someone else is even more unpleasant. Nobody likes a spitter.
In football, spitting has a long history of being regarded as the lowest someone can go, and in some quarters of the English game it’s thought of as worse than a two-footed, leg-breaking tackle. Patrick Vieira of Arsenal was banned for six games in 1999 after spitting at West Ham United’s Neil Ruddock. When leading football pundit Jamie Carragher spat in the direction of a 14-year-old in a nearby car a few years ago, people demanded that Sky sack him.
So let the record show that The Athletic is not an advocate of, or an apologist for, spitting. It would be awful if someone was to think otherwise.
All that said, it is impossible not to regard the case of Evangelos Marinakis, Nottingham Forest’s owner and football’s latest alleged expectorator, who has been given a five-match stadium ban after the Football Association found him guilty of spitting on the floor near a match official, as utterly absurd — for everyone involved.
Particularly the written explanation for the charge, which features some hilariously solemn language and comical legalese that, in the circumstances, simply cannot be taken seriously.
Marinakis watching a Forest game this season (Mike Egerton/PA Images via Getty Images)
The facts are these.
At the end of Forest’s 1-0 loss against visitors Fulham at the City Ground on September 28, a game that featured a couple of debatable penalty decisions that went against the home team, Marinakis appeared in the players’ tunnel. The FA said that Marinakis then “spat on the floor as the match officials walked past him” to express his unhappiness at those decisions.
Marinakis contends that he didn’t spit. He might have sent some fluids from his mouth towards the ground as he coughed, but he didn’t deliberately spit at, near, around, towards or on any of PGMOL’s finest. Forest have made clear they are going to appeal both the decision and the length of the suspension.
On the one hand, as we’ve established, spitting is revolting. But on the other hand: who cares?
The answer to the latter question is apparently: the FA. The FA cares about this, to the tune of a 14-page, 58-item, 4,486-word document that is written in the tone of a crucial legal opinion about a defining issue of our game. It sets out the verdict of the independent regulatory commission that ruled on the matter, a commission comprised of a KC (King’s Counsel — a senior lawyer) named Dominic Anderson, the former Charlton Athletic midfielder Bradley Pritchard and ex-Walsall goalkeeper Mick Kearns.
The first few pages deal with some pretty dry procedural stuff concerning Marinakis appealing the charge on a few technicalities. You have to wait until page six for the good/gobby stuff. Here we get the meat of the accusation, which is:
There’s something especially funny about the bolded-up section of this, written in the tone of an outraged member of a particularly futzy homeowners’ association, livid that the new family at number 24 have painted their front door a gaudy shade of purple.
The ‘extraordinary incident report’ (which sounds like something that should be written after a soldier accidentally launches a nuclear missile, not whether or not a man has spat near a referee), also features a statement from the fourth official from the Fulham match, Tim Robinson, who declares: “I then came back out to continue monitoring the tunnel area and witnessed Mr Evangelos Marinakis making a spitting action as the match officials walked past him.”
We’re into Zapruder film territory here, entering the deep analysis phase of what might constitute a “spitting action”. Further statements from the two assistant referees are then included, which are more direct about Marinakis definitively spitting on the tunnel floor, rather than the vague notion of “a spitting action”.
Then comes the highlight of the whole report: Marinakis’ statement, in which he sets out his interpretation of events.
It’s worth luxuriating in this and carefully considering which parts are your favourites but, for the record, our highlights are:
- The solemn confirmation that “his coughs contain phlegm”.
- The earnest assertion that he was “taking lozenges” at the time (the brand remains unconfirmed).
- The rather quaint phrase “he felt a cough coming”, which sounds a bit like someone’s grandma said it.
- The admirable admission that, while Marinakis did not intend to expel anything from his throat onto the floor, it may have happened inadvertently.
- The suggestion that any spit or phlegm the officials believed they saw could have come from anyone.
Then we discover there is video footage of this incident, but that it is from a security camera, calling to mind those spy dramas where a senior spook barks “check CCTV” at a tech whizz sat behind a bank of computers.
After this, things get confrontational.
Then, the FA drops its bombshell: they are calling bull***t on the cough. Referring to evidence from the referee and an assistant, they claim that: “Neither mentioned a cough. We think it is likely that this is because there was no such cough.”
‘J’accuse!’ This is Hercule Poirot gathering the suspects in the drawing room, Columbo spinning on his heel and saying “…just one more thing.” ‘We put it to you, sir, that there was no such cough!’ Case closed!
After this, the report enters passive-aggressive chiding mode, with the passage:
“Typically, if someone was about to cough, common decency demands that one covers one’s mouth. We are sure that EM (Marinakis) would have covered his mouth if he was about to cough as someone was approaching in the opposite direction.”
This, arguably, is the funniest bit of the whole report, the FA coming within a whisker of suggesting that Marinakis was not raised correctly, and that his mum would be awfully cross if he hadn’t covered his mouth like a polite young man. Did nobody teach you manners? Where was his handkerchief!?! What is the world coming to?
That tone is continued in item 41, which is reminiscent of a snooty schoolmaster telling a truculent pupil they won’t get anywhere in this world with that attitude.
Reading all of this, it’s impossible not to be reminded of the episode of Seinfeld in which a parody of the film JFK put forward the ‘Magic Loogie’ theory, with characters Newman and Kramer telling their story of how former New York Mets baseball star Keith Hernandez spat on both of them in one single expulsion.
Which is another way of saying: it is all very silly indeed.
The only person who really deserves any sympathy is the poor cleaner, who presumably had to mop up whatever came out of Marinakis’ mouth, intentionally or otherwise. All sorts of nasty stuff ends up on the floor of the players’ tunnel at a football stadium, but the contents of a Greek man’s gullet, particularly one who admits to regularly smoking cigars, isn’t going to make that process any more enjoyable.
What does this tell us about Marinakis? If you believe the FA’s contention that he deliberately expelled phlegm at an official, then he’s a man with a loose attitude to hygiene and a child’s attitude to protest.
An animated Marinakis at the City Ground (Simon Stacpoole/Offside/Offside via Getty Images)
But the fact he and Forest have confirmed that they are appealing the decision also tells you he’s a man who thrives on conflict, on the idea that the world is against him and his team, and that he will use that as fuel. It’s consistent with his prevailing attitude ever since Forest gained promotion to the Premier League in 2022, having railed against a succession of injustices, some real, some perceived.
GO DEEPER
Nottingham Forest, their acrimony with the Premier League and a lingering sense of injustice
The question of whether everyone is out to get him/Forest is sort of irrelevant. Encouraging a ‘bunker mentality’ is one of the oldest tricks in the football book. The reason for this is that it usually works. There are few more powerful bonding experiences than ‘us against the world’. Regardless of whether you agree with Marinakis, you can’t blame him for trying to harness all of this for his and his club’s benefit.
This is not the first time Marinakis has got into trouble because of a supposed cough.
It was allegedly he who first transmitted Covid-19 to Arsenal manager Mikel Arteta, when Olympiacos (the Greek club he owns) played the Londoners in the Champions League during that weird period early in 2020 when football was sticking its fingers in its ears and hoping the impending pandemic would just blow over.
As you will no doubt recall, it did not blow over.
This time though, we hope the whole business gets forgotten as quickly as possible.
(Top photo: Mike Egerton/PA Images via Getty Images)
