So a couple of weeks back, when we reviewed how one should and should not apologize, we left out a little bitty detail: one should never issue their apology to their head coach via “Twitter”.
Jozy Altidore is learning that the hard way. See, on Saturday, Altidore was something like twenty minutes late for Hull’s match against Portsmouth, which meant that he was benched. And so Altidore, ever the fastidious soul, decided to apologize to everyone via the best medium he could think of: his Twitter page.
You can check there, but you won’t find the apology. It’s since been taken down (why you’re ever allowed to remove a tweet is beyond me). However, had you been paying attention around game time, you would’ve read the following:
“Apologize to all of you. I showed up late. Made a big mistake. I’m very, very sorry.”
Simple, concise, with a full acceptance of responsibility. Well done, right?
Wrong. Apparently, Phil Brown prefers his apologies engraved, with a calligraphy-based font on the envelope. Or, at the very least, he likes them issued privately. Says Brown:
“It’s going to cost him a lot of money, unfortunately. That for me is information that stays in house. The reason he wasn’t on the bench was our business.”
Now on one hand, I see his point. Altidore’s saving a little face here; if he’s not on the bench because he was late it’s different than not being on the bench because he’d dropped form. One reason is stupid and irresponsible; the other reason indicates that he’s maybe a poor player.
On the other hand…really? I mean, this is just about the most innocuous tweet ever. He’s completely contrite, he accepts his responsibility, and he almost tells the reading audience that Phil Brown was teaching him a valuable lesson. This isn’t Darren Bent or Larry Johnson; this is a bona fide responsible Tweet.
Hopefully, this won’t mean less playing time for Altidore (if that’s even possible), as Bob Bradley’s likely only looking for a reason to bench Altdore for the Ching-Casey striker tandem in the World Cup.
Playing fast and loose with the term striker aren’t we? If there was a way to score a negative number of goals, a Ching-Casey “striker” tandem would be the way to go.