Caught between Red Devils and the deeply irritating vuvuzela
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Muslim clerics in Malaysia said the Manchester United badge was promoting the devil and would lead to the path of sin. Photograph: Don McPhee for the Guardian
If I had been told, even just a few days ago, that a group of Manchester United fans would be ordered to strip off their shirts and "repent immediately", frankly I wouldn't have been at all surprised. It's only ever been a matter of time until somebody lost their patience, the only question has been who, when, and with what level of violence.
Thankfully there has been no violence as of yet, but most worrying for United fans, particularly for those with no intention of stripping off their shirts and repenting immediately, is the identity of the individual whose patience has snapped: God. Just their luck to be picked on by perhaps the only major public figure Sir Alex Ferguson couldn't get the better of in a bout of mind games.
God's word was channelled through a group of Muslim clerics in Malaysia, who suddenly spotted that the Red Devils' club crest featured a red devil and didn't like it one bit. "In Islam we don't allow people to wear this sort of thing," said one. "You are only promoting the devil." The Mufti of Perak said that wearing the Nike‑branded top "leads to a path of sin" (and to be fair that was pretty much how it worked with Cristiano Ronaldo).
United fans, after 11 league titles in 24 years of almost incessant success under Ferguson, must have been thinking that someone up in the heavens was looking down upon them and cheering. But first the Glazers, and now this – turns out nobody was supporting them from up in the heavens after all, though a few thousand were pretty close, if you count the upper tier of Old Trafford's giddying North Stand.
Without for a second doubting the integrity of those who spoke out against United's kit, it was a little odd for the issue to come to their attention this week, while United are on a pre-season tour of faraway America, and not, say, last summer, when they played a Malaysia XI in their own national stadium. Or in 2006 when the Malaysian airline AirAsia sponsored United, painted Wayne Rooney's face on one of their planes, called it The Red Devil and flew it around the world.
Maybe they just felt it was a good week to ban stuff. They were not alone in that, with the Sky Sports News ticker having spent most of Monday and Tuesday doing little more than informing viewers when yet another football club announced a vuvuzela ban.
The clubs did so, to their very great credit, with so much creativity their press releases could have been penned by Pelé. I'm not a fan of the plastic parpers, without doubt the most irritating yet unaccountably popular outsized hooters to be created since Katie Price last went under the knife, but was very impressed by the number of reasons people could think of for banishing them.
So at Spurs "they pose unnecessary risks to public safety", Everton "have in the past had problems with people throwing objects on to the pitch" and Norwich are worried about "the possibility they could be used as weapons". Sunderland have a blanket ban on musical instruments – that's right, even the flute – and West Ham admitted "they could be considered to be an annoyance to others".
In the middle of the transfer window, football's collective mindset seemed to have switched temporarily from splurging to purging. And it made so much sense. What better time than this, as we enter an age of unimagined austerity and while there's nothing much else going on except for some cycling somewhere, to take a step back from the sport and consider what we could really live without? Surely we wouldn't stop at the devil and the horns?
I stared, expectantly, at the TV screen, waiting for the all-but-inevitable announcement that Newcastle United had outlawed aubergines, or that Bolton will not permit any supporter to enter the Reebok Stadium "if they're wearing their tie really short like some totally lame 12-year-old with peer‑pressure issues".
But then, nothing. Indeed, worse than nothing: far from providing effective leadership at this crucial hour by taking something out of the game, the Football Association brought something in, announcing that Fabio Capello was about to get a new, English member of his coaching set-up. Out of step as ever, this surely makes them the only publicly funded organisation currently adding new tiers to their existing management structure.
And so the week ends, with an air of mild disappointment and the vuvuzelas the one real casualty. It turns out the only horribly annoying blight on football that we won't be seeing much of in England next season is one we didn't see any at all of last season. Although you never know, there's still time for Real Madrid to buy Ashley Cole.
What irritants would you want to see banished from football? Feel free to add your suggestions below – or just go for the personal abuse. As ever, it's up to you.