Papiss Cisse vs Jonny Evans: The Psychology of Football's 'Salivagate'

Yesterday afternoon, less than 24 hours after his side lost to Manchester United, Newcastle striker Papiss Cisse publicly admitted to what was by then already pretty fucking obvious. The striker issued an apology for spitting at opponent Jonny Evans, a player who himself appeared to have initially spat at Cisse after the two had tangled in the kind of niggly off-the-ball bullshit that strikers and defenders engage in all the time. But for some reason that Wednesday night was different, and the two millionaires decided the best thing to do was to start gobbing all over one another on live TV.

If you know anything about the received wisdom of English football culture, you will know the following: that penalties are just a lottery, that making a show of quickly retrieving the ball from the back of the net when you've just scored a late consolation goal demonstrates all the doomed heroism of the 1942 Dieppe Raid and that, above all else, spitting at someone is literally the worst thing you can possibly do. Hock on a fellow player and you're shipped straight to the nonce wing of HMP Footy with the guys from Soccer Saturday as the screws. Condemnation of Evans and Cisse continues to come from all corners. Name a pundit or ex-pro and they're all using the same words. "Disgusting". "Embarrassing". "The lowest of the low". Never mind that when it comes to footballers swapping body fluids, plenty of those voicing disdain would merrily film themselves double-teaming some poor girl in Malia should the opportunity arise. No, this was about right and wrong. And what Evans and Cisse had done was wrong. So bloody wrong.

But why is spitting such a big deal? I know it's gross and everything but the Football Association have made it one of the worst things you can do on the pitch, this season doubling the length of the ban you will face if found guilty to six matches. Which is loads. In fact, as many people have already pointed out, it's two more games than John Terry had to miss for racially abusing Anton Ferdinand. Or take a more humdrum example: last weekend Hull City's Maynor Figueroa did a filthy tackle on Stoke City's Stephen Ireland that left the box-to-box weirdo with a gaping, bloody, snuff-vid quality flesh wound. When Joey Barton got sent off for slapping an opposition player in the testicles last month, everybody just kind of shrugged and sighed. Neither player will be forced to serve anything close to a six-match stretch for their actions.

Obviously, logically, these punishments are inconsistent, but it just goes to show how the issue of emptying the back of your throat on people draws a visceral rather than intellectual response. And while there's loads of stuff you can read online about the sociology of spitting and the history of bodily taboos and humanity's inherent fear of disease, I think that what it really boils down to is ego. Footballers are almost professionally required to hold both themselves and their abilities in the highest regard, otherwise they wouldn't have the psychological mettle to go out and do what they do. And that's totally fair enough. We don't tend to want our footballers to be wracked with self-doubt. So while being the target of a late, late tackle might well shatter a player's fibia, it won't shatter their carefully nurtured belief that they are highly visible, special and commanding of respect.

But to be spat at? It's a universal sign of contempt. It's designed to say "You might as well not even be there". And it short-circuits the psyche of footballers. It rubs the same mental raw spot that causes Brazilian defenders to enter totally fucking apeshit beastmode when some cocky little show-pony attempts a seal dribble during a game. It's part of the whole weird psychological package that makes being nutmegged the cause of such mortal shame. I mean, I get nutmegged all the time and it's really not that bad. After a while it almost becomes comforting.

I dunno. Maybe I've gone a bit pop-psych mad. Nobody likes being spat at. At school, I broke my mate's leg with a tackle so heavy and late it was like one of those people who complete the London Marathon in a deep sea diver's outfit. We laugh about it now – I do, anyway – but I reckon if I'd spat in his face we'd be strictly Facebook. I guess what we can say with certainty, though, is that when it comes to spitting, it gives football fans the chance to do something rare, which is unite under a common moral consensus. It's actually kind of lame. We live in an age where fans will spend weeks arguing over the precise morality of biting a player, so the chance to actually all be on the same side is a cheap kind of thrill. Suddenly, fans of all stripes get to band together into a League of Augsburg-type coalition. Only rather than Louis the XIV's France as the common enemy, it's El Hadji Diouf.

(Actually, as an aside, I quite liked watching Diouf play precisely because you knew that, at any given moment, he might start spitting at opposition players like some sociopathic, diamond-encrusted camel. Every time he was on the receiving end of a late tackle you'd shift in your seat and feel a trill of adrenaline. More than you felt watching Leeds under Neil Warnock, at least.)

Anyway, back to Cisse and Evans. In his apology yesterday, the Newcastle striker pointed out that he didn't want kids to follow his bad example which yeah, grumble grumble, I suppose is what you sort of have to say. But the point is that he has apologised and taken his ban on the chin. But the thing that means this particular spitting controversy isn't going to go away any time soon is the fact that, at the time of writing, Jonny Evans still totally denies having spat in the first place. I'd say that this was pretty ballsy, given the footage of him very much appearing to spit at Cisse, but it's not. There's something about Evans' formal denial – wordy, wheedling and "Who, me?" dismayed – that reminds you of a Good Boy at school who simply isn't used to being busted. "It is not in my character or my nature to spit at anybody nor is it something I have ever done or would ever do," said the defender who got all As and A*s in his GCSEs (this is actually fucking true). "It is certainly not something that I did last night."

I mean, eurgh. You can just see him: "But Miss! But Miss!" Fucking briefcase wanker. Louis van Gaal was on hand after the game to play the part of Evans' uptight mum. "I cannot imagine that [he] could do that. I cannot image. No. No."

The whole thing is on the front cover of the Sun today. They're calling it "Salivagate" and describing the pair as "Phlegmier League" stars which, credit where it's due, is actually quite good. But take a step back and here we are again. Football, morality and tabloid puns. It's all so familiar. It's all so boring. Sometimes you just wish something else was happening in the world.

@ben_machell

Previously – The Doomed Fairytale of Harry Kane