Football’s towel problem really is a soggy subject

Football doesn’t need another flashpoint – not with all the other ones. And please: not towels. And yet, oh no, the Africa Cup of Nations final…

For Édouard Mendy, the Senegal goalkeeper, that towel was something to dry his hands on. For Morocco, it was an opportunity for underhand behaviour. (See also: annotated water bottles, the stealing thereof.)

Cue ball boys and flag bearers attempting to steal the towel. Cue Senegal’s reserve keeper, Yehvann Diouf, turning towel protector. Cue jostling, wrestling – dragging, even. Cue also the Moroccan captain flinging another Senegalese towel over an advertising hoarding.

Serial offenders here, Morocco. They had targeted Nigerian towelling in the semi-finals. None of us can condone any of this, no matter how often we have shared the clips.

Why does a goalkeeper need a towel to wipe his hands on when he’s already wearing gloves? Mendy uses Predator Pro by Adidas which, according to the literature, deploy “URG 2.0+ foam technology” and offer an “engineered knitted entry”, an “ergonomical lateral palm wrap”, and a “cushioned punching zone”. “Become the anchor in the storm with these gloves and their game-changing features,” suggests Adidas. Nothing there about needing a towel (not supplied) when it starts chucking it down.

Yet goalkeepers love a towel. And so do outfield players now. Because the long throw is back. And long throws mean towels, and towels mean legal and moral grey areas and, ultimately, crude acts of sabotage which cheapen us all. Why, only last weekend I noticed Declan Rice of Arsenal apparently asking the nearest Nottingham Forest ball boy if he had seen a towel lying around, so that he could dry the ball with it and then endanger Forest’s area. The ball boy smiled innocently and shook his head.

What are the rules on this stuff? And where are the authorities? There’s no big-picture guidance on towel-use coming out of Zurich right now. So Fifa has learnt nothing, clearly, from tennis. Only a couple of years ago, tennis had a massive towel management crisis on its hands: players constantly mopping themselves, hapless ball kids forced into service as towel-wranglers, not just scampering to supply the towel on demand but picking it up when the players disdainfully dropped it behind them after use. Horrible vibe.

But tennis acted – it drew up dedicated towelling zones, took the ball kids out of the equation, made players look after their own towels – and dragged itself back from the brink of towel-based ignominy.

Ideally, of course, you’d go electric. More eco, more sanitary. But the Dyson Airblade into which you could insert your hands while holding a size-five football has yet to be invented. So let’s regulate the current process. The spare balls are on stands: let the towels be, too. Interfering with the towels? Yellow card. And no ball crew or steward involvement. Let the players hang them back up when they’re finished. Failure to do so: again, ­yellow card.

And let’s standardise the towel so there’s no advantage to be sought. We’ve done some browsing here, and our feeling is that Marks & Spencer’s Heavyweight Super Soft Pure Cotton model in stain-obscuring “dark charcoal” is amply suited to game-wide deployment. Though lacking an “engineered knitted entry” (unless, I guess, you fold it cleverly), it does offer, M&S insists, a “gorgeously plush handfeel” and comes with the added reassurance of the company’s trademark “StayNew” finish. Plus it has “antibacterial technology” for longer-lasting freshness, which should make it a firm favourite up and down the touchline.

We’d set the limit at “hand towel” size, with goalkeepers possibly allowed to entertain the larger “bath” version or even, on especially rainy days and at leaky Old Trafford, the still more substantial “bath sheet”, although in our opinion, while the last of those unquestionably provides a properly cosseting wrap in the domestic bathing context, it presents a lot of material to protect when you’re playing against Morocco.

But whatever the towel, and whatever the arrangements, let’s get it all set down and enshrined in the game’s laws. It’s regrettable scenes like last Sunday’s that we’re trying to prevent here and, beyond them, anarchy.

Photograph by Juan Mabromata/AFP via Getty Images