Is Football More Important...?

Shankly Or Mourinho?

It has become one of footballs' most famous quotes. Some might say it has become one of footballs' most infamous quotes.

During one of his wonderfully whimsical monologues Bill Shankly quipped 'Some people believe football is a matter of life and death. I'm very disappointed with that attitude. I can assure you it is much, much more important than that.'

Of course this quote now most often surfaces when something pretty damn awful happens in the world of football and it is generally used to emphasise just how trivial football is compared to more serious things, things like life and death for example.

The relative merits of football, life and death have been brought into the spotlight once again this week by Jose Mourinho.

After witnessing distressing injuries to both his goalkeepers at Reading last Saturday Mourinho has let us all know, in no uncertain terms, just where football stands in relation to life and death. His opinion is obviously not the same as Shankly's.

Of course Shankly's comments are now generally regarded as tongue in cheek. This view is probably voiced on his behalf by his staunchest supporters who think their heroes' reputation needs guarding against the unkind spin his words could be given in the light of events such as Heysel, Hillsborough and even the Madejski.

I'm not so sure Shankly would want his comment to be apologised for and I don't necessarily think it needs apologising for.

The basic point is that football might well have been more important to Shankly than life and death.

What would Shankly's life have been without football? It is likely he would have spent most of it down a pit mining coal. Even as a top footballer Shankly had to fight in a war.

Shankly knew how lucky he was to have escaped the life he was probably destined for because of football but even if he had not made it as a professional footballer, and therefore never been a manager either, football would have provided Shankly with his main purpose in life.

Shankly was a man who, till the very end, could not walk down a street or through a park where there were boys playing football without joining in.

He was a man who would watch if he could not play and if he could do neither would chew anyones ear off that he could get to listen.

Because he was an honest, funny, charming and wise man whose love of the game was so obvious and endearing there was never a shortage of people eager to listen, laugh and learn.

Shankly understood life and he understood football. While the tragedies that nearly brought football to its' knees in the 1980's would have appalled the great man as much as everyone else the potential dangers faced by those participating in the game would have merely been considered an occupational hazard.

Accidents, and surely Stephen Hunt's collision with Petr Cech was an accident, happen in football. While nobody likes seeing a player injured, and can only shudder at the prospect of one actually dying during a game, it is important to remember that that can happen at any time.

Football is a contact sport, challenges are meant to be made. There is always a possibility that someone might die during a game of football.

If this is an unacceptable risk then we should just stop playing now. There is no point bleating when bad things do happen.

I cannot believe Shankly would have responded in the way Mourinho did this week had Ray Clemence or Tommy Lawrence suffered the injury Cech sustained at Reading.

I am sure Shankly would have defended Hunts' role as accidental, been gracious about the actions of Reading FC and the ambulance service and lightened a difficult situation with some humourous and gracious comments.

Above all Shankly would have been determined that the game he loved did not suffer as a result.

The constant danger the game of football is in nowadays is that every serious injury sustained by a player leads us closer to the authorities making the game a non contact sport.

Shankly would have hated that.

As I said earlier, I don't think Shankly would want his words diluting to make them more acceptable to the masses in times of crisis.

As for Mourinho's comments this week. Are they more considered and responsible? Possibly. Are they more genuine and heart felt? I doubt it.

Mourinho painted a truly macabre picture when describing the incident with Cech. He went to painstaking lengths to explain just how unimportant football is compared to the health and safety of people.

He explained that he wasn't talking about Cech as a footballer but as a friend and a human being.

When, however, he quickly went on to dramatise the scene played out off the field at the Madejski last weekend and confronted the world with the possibility of Cech's death he immediately referred back to him as his goalkeeper.

All too quickly it was the loss of Mourinho's goalkeeper that was causing him concern, not his friend.

As Mourinho said himself the incident had left him emotional and it must also be taken into account that English is not his first language but he does seem to love the sound of his own voice so we have little alternative but to take him at his word.

His comments did not really do anybody any good and if his statements about the role of Reading FC and the Berkshire ambulance service are inaccurate then he will be lucky to escape without some sort of punishment.

Both those parties have denied Mourinho's version of events in the strongest, though sensibly worded, terms. If Mourinho has simply laid false blame at someone elses' door rather than ask questions of his own staff then he is surely open for a charge of slander.

It could not be expected that the self styled "Special One" could simply accept that everyone acted to the best of their ability and with the best intentions but that sometimes, unfortunately, things do go wrong.

The worst thing about Mourinho's comments on this, and every other incident he passes judgement on, is that he would have given an entirely different version of events had the incident occured at the other end.

If Drogba and Marcus Hahnemann had been involved in exactly the same collision with exactly the same result would Mourinho have spoken out against his player?

Would he bollocks.

Would he have defended the collision as accidental and insisted that Drogba had never intended there to be any contact?

Of course he would.

You can call this being blinkered. In fact it is simply dishonesty.

Not many managers these days are capable of honesty when it comes to discussing their own team, Stuart Pearce being a notable exception. Mourinho cannot see anything in any other shade than blue.

One thing is for sure. It is hard to see how Mourinho's scaremongering can actively benefit football. His comments cannot benefit the game that gives him such a magnificent lifestyle and which he must surely love.

It is impossible to imagine Bill Shankly ever saying or doing anything that might damage or tarnish the game of football.

It is possible to now shake our heads about his life and death comment, tell ourselves that he came from a more innocent time and that the events of modern times have rendered his words foolish and redundant.

That would be completely missing the point. Shankly lived through plenty of footballing tragedies.

He lived through the death of the Celtic goalkeeper John Thomson, diving at the feet of a Rangers forward, in 1931. He lived through the Burnden Park disaster of 1946 and he lived through the Ibrox disaster of 1971.

He was intimately aware of the terrible injury sustained by Sheffield Wednesday's Derek Dooley playing at Preston and the near fatal collision Manchester City's Bert Trautmann suffered in the 1956 cup final at Wembley.

Not to mention the Munich air disaster of 1958.

As a Scot and an honourary Lancastrian all these incidents were extremely close to home for Shankly.

As a man who lived for football they would have cut him to the quick wherever he had hailed from.

Shankly understood full well that football and tragedy can never be wholly seperated but he never lost his belief that football was the most important thing. That through the bad, difficult, hard times the game of football must come out at the other side and carry on regardless.

Whatever knocks the game received the important thing was that it carried on as before so that millions of other people could learn to play, watch, discuss and love the game as he did.

It might not be the most politically correct thing to admit to these days but Bill Shankly, as usual, had a pretty good point when he informed the world that football was more important than life and death.

Let us know what you think here: Football England