Marcos Alonso is a man who draws a lot of attention.
He is a striking footballer, a true superimposed winger with an eye for the goal who has decisively taken the place of the starting left defense in what is currently the best soccer team in the country.
But that is not why we are here. There are plenty of other reasons he’s garnering attention, most notably from Tottenham fans who put on another great show by wowing him during Chelsea’s eventual one-sided victory at White Hart Lane on Sunday.
While this is now a traditional annual event, the reasons behind it may not be as well known as they could and should be. traces v Chelsea This is usually a television show, but while commentators sometimes note the presence of the boo, they are generally reticent about its origin.
Marcos Alonso killed a woman. That is the simple fact. In 2011, the then 20-year-old collided with a BMW against a wall in Madrid after a night out, killing one passenger and injuring three others.. He was driving at more than twice the speed limit of 50 km / h and had a blood alcohol level of 0.93 mg per milliliter of blood.
He was finally convicted in 2016, when he was fined 61,000 euros, but escaped from prison. This was in part because he paid the victim’s family a large sum of money, which helped him reduce his sentence. The driving ban he received, three years and four months, had actually already been enforced in the long wait for the court to proceed.
This is all very old news, but it’s still reasonable to be upset about it. Feeling that the right here has drifted at least a little, if not totally perverse.
In fact, it is very footballing that Alonso’s ability to kick balls has allowed him to avoid practically any professional inconvenience resulting from his criminal stupidity, while that same well-compensated footballing ability made his punishment irrelevant. It doesn’t matter that this was 10 years ago; it is reasonable to think that this leaves a bad taste in the mouth.
So the pearl clutch that greets Spurs fans’ continued penchant for wowing him is frankly a bit disgusting. It is literally a small price to pay for what he did; once a year he is booed briefly, while his team, however, usually heads for another comfortable victory.
We got an email this week saying the boos from Spurs fans were “bad.” It’s hard to escape the idea that priorities are a little skewed there.
Then there are those who say that Spurs fans are berating Alonso for scoring some goals against them, which is not entirely correct. There would be many players to provoke, including many of Alonso’s teammates. Chelsea score many goals against Spurs.
But it’s just as far-fetched to pretend the Spurs’ boos are fueled entirely by a noble disregard for their past. Isn’t it a shame that the enthusiasm for the justified boos faded immediately after Chelsea’s second goal on Sunday?
If Alonso weren’t playing for a hated opponent, would Spurs fans still care? Is there the shyness and introspection among those fans to acknowledge how much of this is due to what happened and how much is due to him being a rather reprehensible Chelsea player that they don’t like? How many Spurs fans know all the details of why they captivate? How many could name their victim?
There is no question that Spurs fans enjoy their annual Alonso concert and the motivation behind this is suspect at best. But that is also very modern football. The tribalism that allows a heartbreaking incident that ended a young woman’s life to be used as a weapon for chatting. It will be interesting to see how Spurs fans eager to make their voices heard about footballers who could use their status and wealth to undermine the law greet Cristiano Ronaldo when he shows up at Manchester United.
But regardless of what you think of what Spurs fans do when Alonso shows up, it would not be correct to establish a false equivalency here. Spurs fans have every right to berate him for the rest of the time, no matter how complicated or confusing the motivations behind it have become.
Footballers are booed for much more trivial things and sometimes even really admirable things. Which surprisingly brings us to Alonso’s latest arrival as the center of attention.
He has decided that he will no longer kneel. Although the power of the gesture comes from its collective nature, it loses that power immediately the moment it is forced. Of course, Alonso has every right to make this decision and in no way suggests that he is a racist. It does make racists happy though, and if a life decision you make ever makes Nigel Farage happy, it’s at least worth stopping and thinking about it some more.
As it stands, Alonso has cemented a curious point as a kind of king jab, drawing even more bites into his orbit by the sheer gravitational pull of his own actions.
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