A Footballers Job Is To...Play Football

Pint sized and sulky Spurs striker Jermain Defoe bit Javier Mascherano on the arm during Spurs' match against this season's relegation fodder West Ham.

It made him look a little pathetic, childish and weak, for sure, but it did give Spurs head coach Martin Jol a chuckle and a good one liner about it being just "a little love bite".

Nevertheless, when tired, old, second-rate politicos like Sports Minister Richard Caborn get in on the act moaning on about "role models", "responsibility" and (god help us all) "setting a good example", it really starts to annoy me.

Let's get something straight. Footballers are hired for their ability to play, um, football. Not for their intellectual credentials. Not because they 'scrub up nice' when meeting your mum and not because they are polite and well-mannered young men. If you want that sort of person, then it's accountants you want, not footballers.

If you can play football to the highest standard, then you get to play for the best teams. But to claim that footballers are role models and should set high standards of behaviour for children to follow is, frankly, laughable.

Sure, kids want to be like their favourite players when kicking the ball around the playground. Hell, they may even want to grow up to play for England, but it is the job of parents, teachers and peers to be role models to their kids.

The job of footballers is to play football. That's it.