After the latest general meeting of the International Football Association Board (IFAB) this weekend, a surprising decision was announced: any player who covers their mouth when speaking to an opponent could be punished under new measures to be brought in ahead of the World Cup this summer.
The decision is in response to the incident in which Real Madrid’s Vinicius Junior alleged that he had been racially abused by Benfica’s Gianluca Prestianni during a Champions League game on February 17, and that Prestianni concealed what he said by speaking behind his shirt. UEFA banned Prestianni for one game and opened an investigation into the allegations.
Real Madrid’s goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois said this week that he would welcome a ban on players covering their mouths if it helped eradicate racism from the sport.
“With Prestianni, it’s complicated because it will always be one person’s word against another’s,” said the Belgian. “We are 100 per cent with Vinicius, who has suffered a lot from this (racist abuse), but with the mouth covered, you can never know absolutely, and Benfica are bound to defend their player. It’s down to UEFA and the institutions to act.”
It didn’t take long.
Gianluca Prestianni is being investigated for allegedly racially abusing Vinicius Junior (Patricia De Melo Moreira/AFP via Getty Images)
While the intentions behind the decision may be good — preventing players from being able to disguise abusive behaviour — whether it can be enforced is another question. In the confusion of a game, will officials always be able to distinguish when a player is speaking to a team-mate or to an opponent?
And bearing in mind players have been routinely speaking behind their hands and shirts for years, is there not a risk that players are going to be punished for actions that have become habitual? So ubiquitous is the practice that it is common to see amateurs and youth players concealing their mouths, even when there is not a TV camera in sight.
All of which invites the question: why do players hide what they are saying, even for the most mundane interactions?
A part of the answer is, of course, the scrutiny to which the game is subjected these days. It was not always the case. Take the example of Didier Deschamps and Roger Lemerre from 2000.
They are standing a couple of yards apart, in the middle of the pitch at Feyenoord’s De Kuip stadium, deep in conversation. Lemerre and Deschamps, the manager and captain of the French national team, should have been basking in the glory of becoming only the second team in the men’s game to hold both the World Cup and European Championship at the same time.
They had beaten Italy 2-1 in the final of Euro 2000 with a golden goal from David Trezeguet. But the conversation looked serious, the body language tense. It had come out in the French press a week earlier that Deschamps, then 31, had intended to quit after the tournament and felt that his unifying role within the group was not fully appreciated.
Lemerre and Deschamps in intense conversation after the Euro 2000 final (Olivier Morin/AFP via Getty Images)
Was that what they were discussing? French TV channel LCI saw an opportunity in the camera’s unobstructed view and employed a lip reader to provide subtitles, which revealed that Lemerre was imploring Deschamps to delay his decision.
“For now, it’s party time,” he said.
“But I have to have a choice,” replied Deschamps. “I’m fed up, I’m really fed up.”
It is worth revisiting that scene in Rotterdam because it is highly unlikely that the watching world will have any such view at this summer’s World Cup.
For that footage comes from a different era, in which players and coaches would speak freely to each other. These days, players almost habitually conceal their mouths when talking, whether behind their hands or by pulling up their shirts.
Sunderland’s Nordi Mukiele and Granit Xhaka hide their mouths as they plan a free kick (Richard Heathcote/Getty Images)
At a most fundamental level, it is a method employed by players to preserve privacy, whether they are discussing personal matters, or whether they are talking about tactics or in-game decisions. So ubiquitous is the practice that it has almost become a compulsion.
Is it paranoid? In some case, perhaps, but then lip readers are sometimes used to try to figure out what players are saying, including to help investigate controversial incidents, such as what Italy’s Marco Materazzi said to Zinedine Zidane before the French midfielder headbutted him during the 2006 World Cup final, and what John Terry said to Anton Ferdinand in an October 2011 match between Chelsea and Queens Park Rangers, which resulted in Terry being found guilty by the FA of “abusive and/or insulting words and/or behaviour”, banned for four games and stripped of the England captaincy (Terry was acquitted in a separate court case of using racist language).
It is important to note that lip reading is not an exact science and that even professionals can miss nuance or context. And so given the way stories circulate on social media, it is understandable that players try to be cautious.
“Back in the day, someone might have seen someone say something, but apart from people talking about it down the pub, it wasn’t going anywhere,” a Premier League player, speaking anonymously, told The Athletic in 2021.
“Whereas now you can put it on Twitter and someone can just caption what they’re saying, then it gets back to the club.”
Now you will see players doing it when talking tactics, speaking to officials, or making small talk with each other at the end of the game. Even a manager as forthright as Sean Dyche was doing it on the touchline at Nottingham Forest.
Even Sean Dyche, an outspoken and forthright manager, covered his mouth when speaking on the touchline (Shaun Botterill/Getty Images)
Just last weekend, Declan Rice was filmed walking off the pitch speaking to Bukayo Saka and Arsenal assistant manager Albert Stuivenberg about how a Spurs fan had held up a picture of his wife as he went over to take a corner.
He had his shirt over his mouth but the mic still picked up the conversation. “When I went to take a corner, they were showing it, so obviously I was angry,” he said.
It is an idiosyncrasy that has crept into the game in recent years. Most players are not breaking the Official Secrets Act and are most likely just having the sort of small talk any colleagues would in an office environment.
When your office is a football pitch, however, surrounded with cameras and with every fan armed with a phone, it is understandable why they feel even the most mundane interaction needs to be protected.
