I've been intrigued by a couple of recent reports of footballers being investigated for spitting at other players. My concern is that the output of spit in professional football is so copious that it must be hard for investigators to distinguish between spitting at others and, well, just spitting.
No other sport that I can think of has this peculiar non-stop habit, though Nadal briefly added spitting on clay one year to his Tourette-like gestures before serving .. I guess he was dissuaded from continuing by Uncle Tony. "No es bonito, hijo ..."
So where do footballers get this special licence from? The occasional trainer has been seen to spit on the touchline, for no obvious reason other than solidarity, though in the majority of their cases it must be hard to spit and chew gum at the same time.
Adding spit to your boot polish has been a long established tradition in the army, and boy scouts indulged in spitting competitions with cherry stones a century ago, even while campaigning for the general public to use spittoons and not the floor. But purely gratuitous spitting is against hygiene and good manners. Sadly, boys today must be all too keen to spit efficiently as they learn the streetwise tricks of the sport. After all, their heroes are expert at it.
CJM
