Last night a footballer was sent off for covering his mouth while speaking to an opponent.<\/p>\n
Which came as something of a surprise.<\/p>\n
When I was younger, covering your mouth while saying something impolite was generally considered good manners.<\/p>\n
The theory was quite simple.<\/p>\n
You didn’t necessarily stop yourself saying something you might later regret.<\/p>\n
You simply tried not to broadcast it to forty thousand people and a television audience of several million.<\/p>\n
It seemed a reasonable compromise.<\/p>\n
Apparently not anymore.<\/p>\n
These days footballers can’t exchange a few words without somebody demanding an investigation.<\/p>\n
There are cameras everywhere.<\/p>\n
Microphones everywhere.<\/p>\n
Experts analysing every angle.<\/p>\n
And, most remarkably of all, people whose job appears to involve reading lips from three hundred yards away.<\/p>\n
I wasn’t even aware that was a profession until a few years ago.<\/p>\n
When I started watching football, players said things to each other all the time.<\/p>\n
Most of it was probably unprintable.<\/p>\n
Some of it was probably quite funny.<\/p>\n
The important thing was that nobody else knew what had been said.<\/p>\n
The referee didn’t know.<\/p>\n
The crowd didn’t know.<\/p>\n
The newspapers didn’t know.<\/p>\n
Life carried on.<\/p>\n
Now every conversation seems to require forensic examination.<\/p>\n
A player covers his mouth and immediately the football world reacts as though he’s attempting to exchange state secrets.<\/p>\n
There are debates.<\/p>\n
Panels.<\/p>\n
Investigations.<\/p>\n
Social media detectives.<\/p>\n
Before long, half the country is discussing a conversation that nobody actually heard.<\/p>\n
Which strikes me as slightly odd.<\/p>\n
Football is becoming increasingly determined to remove every last trace of mystery.<\/p>\n
We have VAR examining tackles frame by frame.<\/p>\n
Statistics measuring things nobody previously knew needed measuring.<\/p>\n
And now we’re apparently expected to know every word spoken between two players standing in the middle of a football pitch.<\/p>\n
Whatever happened to a little uncertainty?<\/p>\n
Sometimes not knowing is perfectly acceptable.<\/p>\n
In fact, it’s rather refreshing.<\/p>\n
Not every conversation requires a transcript.<\/p>\n
Not every disagreement requires a committee.<\/p>\n
Not every incident requires three days of analysis.<\/p>\n
Mind you, perhaps I’m showing my age.<\/p>\n
Maybe modern life simply cannot tolerate unanswered questions.<\/p>\n
Perhaps people would rather spend an entire week debating what somebody might have said than enjoy the football itself.<\/p>\n
Personally, I preferred the old system.<\/p>\n
If two players were having a private conversation, we accepted that it was private.<\/p>\n
If they covered their mouths while doing it, we assumed they were being discreet.<\/p>\n
Or polite.<\/p>\n
Or both.<\/p>\n
And if we didn’t know what was said, we got on with our lives.<\/p>\n
Which, now I think about it, sounds like a rather sensible approach.<\/p>\n
Anyway, what do I know?<\/p>\n
I’m just a grumpy old man.<\/p>\n
Let me know what YOU think in the Comments below \u2014 I always enjoy hearing other people\u2019s take on the madness.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Whatever Happened To Private Conversations? Last night a footballer was sent off for covering his mouth while speaking to an opponent. Which came as something of a surprise. When I was younger, covering your mouth while saying something impolite was generally considered good manners. The theory was quite simple. You didn’t necessarily stop yourself saying […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1149,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[81,13,53,82,111],"tags":[91,86,92,79,98,133,131,95,132,102,106],"class_list":["post-1148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-football","category-grumpy-old-man","category-humour","category-soccer","category-world-cup-2026","tag-british-humour","tag-football","tag-football-culture","tag-grumpy-old-man","tag-modern-football","tag-red-cards","tag-referees","tag-sports-humour","tag-var-era","tag-world-cup-2026","tag-world-cup-diary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1148"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1148\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1150,"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1148\/revisions\/1150"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1149"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}