Tottenham report: jokes have lost all humour in current football landscape

Trying to lighten the mood in the lead up to a tense Champions League final, Tottenham’s Mauricio Pochettino told a joke that was received with laughable consternation by Real Madrid officials. 

Sometimes when you swing for the fences, you miss the ball completely.

That’s how Pochettino must feel after being vilified by Real Madrid for a light-hearted quip made with the right intentions.

The Argentine, who has been linked with a move to the Bernabeu, was chatting to reporters about the club’s plans in anticipation of the final, the criticized comments focussing on Tottenham’s time at Real’s training complex.

"“Ahead of the final, we will train at Valdebebas [Real’s training complex] and sleep in a nearby hotel,” he told El Partidazo de Cope.“I asked Florentino [Perez, Real’s president] to let us sleep in the sports centre, but he told me that I can only sleep there when I become the coach of Real Madrid.”"

Harmless enough, right?

Unfortunately not in a world where jokes, no matter how innocuous, have lost all intended humour.

Madrid released a statement condemning Pochettino’s comments. Below are excerpts taken from that statement:

"Real said they were “surprised by the demonstrations” made by Pochettino about a “supposed request” to stay at their training ground.“Real Madrid wants to make it clear that it is outright false that this request was produced,” they said.They said they had “always shown its absolute availability” to meet the requests of Uefa, Spurs and Liverpool and requests were only for “the use of the training camps of the Ciudad Real Madrid and its changing rooms”.“At no time has our club been requested that these teams could be accommodated in the facilities of Ciudad Real Madrid,” they added."

The world has officially gone mad, and light-hearted humour, apparently, is now as unacceptable as not wearing your helmet on a bicycle. While I don’t remember vividly riding a bike freely without a helmet – maybe because I received too many blows to the head – I can still recall a time when athletes and coaches were encouraged to speak from the heart, off script, candidly and, ultimately, with authenticity.

We now live in a world where everything is scripted for fear of absurd backlash, potential fines, undeserved criticism, which invariably drains the sport we love of genuine emotion, instead making way for robotic, predictable discourse.

But who can blame coaches and athletes for giving scripted, automated, generic answers?

Because if you don’t you’ll end up like Pochettino, castigated for an off-the-cuff light-hearted quip. Looks like that could be the end of Pochettino’s sense of humour, at least in the public eye anyway.

Just imagine what comments the gaffer is currently saying in jest to those in his trusted inner circle right.

Now that would be hilarious.

Oh, to be a fly on the wall, which is what you’ll have to be to hear any more facetious banter from Pochettino, as Madrid has stopped his brief, yet funny, days as a stand-up comedian in their tracks.

I guess every party needs a pooper.