British goalkeeper desperately wants to learn about Hitler. Why would he?
What do you first think of when you see a man with his right hand held straight up in the air and his left-hand fingers on the upper lip? Yeap, that’s it. You don’t even need to read the title to know that that’s something to do with Hitler and Nazis.
Early this year the world got a chance to appreciate photographs of the Crystal Palace goalkeeper Wayne Hennessey showing exactly what you read in the first paragraph. In case you have poor imagination, here you have:
The picture from the team-bonding meal was shared on Instagram by one of Wayne’s teammates. And the fun began! Well, for us, not for Wayne.
On January 8 the Football Association started the investigation of the incident and on January 23 they had the case open. The goalkeeper was about to receive a five-match suspension.
Why “was about’ you may be wondering? Because he was found innocent. Not as innocent as a cute little girl, but not guilty anyway. Can you believe that? I wonder how that could not recognize such an obvious but still lame Hitler parody.
The explanation the goalkeeper managed to come up with is so stupid. He tried to justify himself saying it was a completely innocent gesture that just seemed nasty when caught on camera. He, as it was said during the investigation, had his left hand near the mouth so he could be heard better. And with his right hand, he was trying to beckon a waiter. And, of course, he was eagerly insisting that he hated any forms of racism, Nazism, and other -isms.
What really topped up the story is the fact that the panel noted that Wayne “displayed a very considerable – one might even say lamentable – degree of ignorance” cos he just didn’t know what Nazi salute was. So fucking stupid!
That would be a fabulous ending to a fabulous story, but the Crystal Palace coach decided to speak. You wish he hadn’t. Cos instead of making us believe in the unhappy coincidence that resulted in the photo you see above, he made everything worse. He said that Wayne was desperate to learn as much as he could and that he would work on educating the club on such an important matter.