To be at the Amex Stadium for Tottenham’s game against Brighton on Saturday was to be in the midst of a club in a state of grief.
On Thursday morning, Antonio Conte had broken the news to his players that Gian Piero Ventrone, a much-loved coach, had died suddenly following a short illness.
At Brighton, Conte and Harry Kane both struggled to contain their emotions during TV interviews. Another player found questions about Ventrone too much and walked away from an interview, while Conte’s post-match press conference, in which he paid tribute to Ventrone and his family, was raw and emotive. Conte, who had known Ventrone for nearly three decades, said his players were “devastated by the pain” of his passing.
It can be strange to witness elite footballers struggling with their emotions, because they are typically trained to contain their feelings. There is a danger in thinking of footballers as in a bubble, immune to the same feelings of pain and grief as the rest of us, but the sport’s prevailing ‘keep the show on the road’ attitude in the face of tragedy contributes to this dehumanising of players.
There is often an odd contrast between football’s determination to recognise sorrow and the leeway afforded to its grieving protagonists.
The game does occasionally appear to have an almost unhealthy obsession with grieving, be it through the increasingly extravagant Remembrance Day tributes or the now almost ubiquitous minute’s silence or applause before matches.
These tributes typically have merit and there is power in football coming together in the face of death or tragedy, but there is often a sense that the game is primarily concerned with being seen to do the right thing.
The Queen’s death last month plunged football’s decision-makers into a state of uncertainty, with the game unsure how to appropriately respond to the Monarch’s passing. A round of fixtures was eventually postponed, when a more fitting tribute would surely have been to allow supporters to come together to celebrate her life and reign.
Tony Mowbray, the Sunderland manager, told The Athletic he was “conditioned” to keep playing for Celtic while a full-time carer for his first wife, who was dying of cancer.
His is an extreme example, but there are countless cases of players carrying on as normal after the loss of children, partners, parents and friends.
This attitude is fostered by the environment of elite football, although perhaps the unique and particular pressures of the professional game can, in many cases, exacerbate grief.
Spurs never considered requesting a postponement on Saturday, because everyone who knew Ventrone knew it was the last thing he would have wanted. When the Italian first told Conte he was suffering from leukemia just seven days before he died, his primary concern was missing training. In this case, it felt appropriate to play in honour of a man whose first commitment had always been to support the players.
Everyone deals with grief differently, and it is not to say that playing through the pain is necessarily wrong. But it is not necessarily right, either, and football still feels like a sport which is working out how best to respond to grief, be it collective or private.
