There was a time when a dip into any Premier League line-up would produce a veritable smorgasbord of stars who you'd not only want to cheer to victory, but could imagine sharing a pint with; Gazza waving mock yellow-cards at referees, Vinnie Jones taking no nonsense ( even grabbing the previous player by the private parts when he didn't like what he saw) and Kung-Fu Cantona's philosophising press-conference speeches and on-field peacockerey, all brought the division to life in the '90s.
Looking further back, the banter quota in the upper-levels of English football was upped to degrees unimaginable in the 21st century. Robin Friday served a spell in borstal for stealing car radios before taking on the country's defenders as Reading's chain-smoking mercurial winger in the '70s, and everyone is aware of George Best's extracurricular activities. A decade before Jackie Milburn travelled to St James' Park as their star striker in the exact same way he travelled to it as a boyhood fan; on the bus with the fans.
The aforementioned players didn't always play by the rules; but boy could they play. With skill, finesse and technique, they lit up the game. With their off-the-field antics, and on-the-field capacity to be wildly unpredictable, in varying degrees producing the sublime and the ridiculous. A flick through a 2011/12 Premier League sticker-book (if anyone even collects the things anymore) would tell a very different tale, with page after page of bland and inarticulate non-entities clogging up the spaces once filled by mercurial geniuses.
Whatever happened to the 'characters' of football? And can we get them back?
Taking the first question, the increased professionalism of football has changed the game in two senses. Firstly, in the manner in which top players are acquired; in an almost Soviet manner, today's crop of top-flight footballlers, by and large, would've been within club's ranks since before they hit puberty. Encouraged to view football as the be all and end all of their lives, with every action leading up to that initial top-flight appearance, there's simply no time or space for many to develop as interesting and diverse characters.
Before moving to Fulham at the age of 18, England centre-half Chris Smalling wanted to spend a week with his friends at university enjoying fresher's week; obviously, this was a risk that his new employers weren't willing to take, and he missed out on a formative experience in any young person's life. Anyone who's since seen a post-match interview with the young defender would testify that he could do with becoming a bit more interesting; maybe a pressure-free week with the lads would've achieved this.
Secondly, and tying in with the aforementioned example is the way in which clubs increasingly see their players not as components of a team, but as components of a brand; it is in their interests to portray them as wholesome everymen from a marketing perspective, as well as keeping them to pristine levels of fitness. Obviously the reader of this article would happily trade a degree of freedom for the lavish lifestyle of a Premier League footballer (as would the author); nonetheless, the stifling effect clubs can often have makes football less interesting for us as fans.
This leads quite nicely on to the second question; how do we get the 'characters' back? The first answer is through bat-s*** craziness on the behalf of individuals. There is literally no containing a wildcard such as the firework setting-off, bully-chastising, cash handing-outing, quad-bike purchasing, daytime-TV expletive-blurting-outer Mario Balotelli. Good. His presence has made the Premier League a more interesting competition to watch.
The second answer comes when players take to a sphere as of yet largely untapped by their clubs; social media. When Tom Cleverley had a large portion of his season cut short by Bolton striker Kevin Davies' challenge, this journalist watched as Manchester United's press-officer frantically sought to mitigate the impact comments on a Facebook profile purporting to be his would make on the next day's back pages.
Similarly, Twitter provides a space in which, in 140-characters or less, we can see the often ill-advised outbursts of players; from Joey Barton's philosophical musings and Smiths' lyrics, to Wayne Rooney defending his rubbish hair transplant, to Emmanuel Frimpong attempting to pass "DENCH" into the popular vernacular, social media allows us to see, in a largely unfiltered way, the instantaneous responses of footballers to the bubble the sport has constructed around them.
Football becomes all the more interesting for it, with matches not played out by millionaire wooden foosball figures, but by genuine people, with often amusing things to say (albeit with almost universally horrendous grammar and spelling).
When this happens fans become more invested in the game, and if nothing else, have something extra to chat about over their post-match pint. Let's hope it stays that way.