“What happened to our beautiful game?”. “This is nothing but a load of woke nonsense”. “The game is well and truly gone”.

These are just a few phrases you might have heard in your football circles of late. They speak to the idea that football in this country has lost recipes in an irredeemable way.

It’s a sentiment that reflects a collective hunger for English football to return to the crude days of old. A time when players would unapologetically poke fun at their opponents. When a talisman would grab the chance to give it back to opposing fans who’d been giving them stick for 90 minutes. When the game’s protagonists oozed personality and weren’t afraid to show it.

However, now it seems we’re entering a place where English football is experiencing something of an identity crisis. It feels like every week, an ex-professional baller comes out and tries to put a player, or team, in their place for exhibiting the same unabashed charisma we’ve apparently been missing.

Increasingly, it feels as if English football is caught between two footballing worlds without knowing which one it wants to exist in. One day, we’re seeing pundits criticise Manchester City’s pre-game tifo of Rodri kissing the Ballon d’Or before their defeat to Real Madrid. Then everyone loves how Abdoulaye Doucouré went to celebrate in front of the Liverpool fans after Everton’s dramatic 2-2 draw in the last ever Merseyside derby at Goodison Park. 

The difference in the way these instances are viewed reflects a confusion that begs the question: when did shithousery become a crime?

Jamie Carragher and Jason Cundy, among others, took it upon themselves to try and rain on Myles Lewis-Skelly’s parade after copying Erling Haaland’s celebration in Arsenal’s 5-1 win over Manchester City. Carragher’s logic was that the 18-year-old is not “in a position to be taking the piss out of Haaland” because the striker “scored 250 goals and won every trophy under the sun”.

Not only is this a dim way to view football, it’s also hypocritical. We’ve seen many other Premier League players act much more provocatively than Lewis-Skelly and nobody reprimanded them for it. In fact, the league and other broadcasters have produced their own compilations glorifying the same cheekiness Carragher and co are clutching their pearls at.

The biggest irony is, the pundits who are doing up celebration police come from an era when this stuff wasn’t even called "shithousery" - it was just an accepted part of the game. 

Emmanuel Adebayor running the full length of the pitch to celebrate in front of Arsenal fans. David Moyes accused Luis Suárez of diving, only for the Uruguayan striker to score and celebrate with a dive right in front of the Everton manager. David Luiz smiling on the floor after getting Rafael sent off. Theo Walcott holding up a 2-0 to Spurs fans while being stretchered off the pitch. Mario Balotelli’s ‘why always me?’ celebration in City’s 6-1 win over Manchester United. Sam Allardyce laughing at Chico Flores after he went down holding his face. This is game we love.

Now we have trends like players not wanting to walk over the opposing team’s badge in the tunnel. Sean Dyche never got sacked for this. The competitive edge that has given English football some of its most iconic moments is in danger of being blunted by a condescending hypersensitivity. 

This was compounded by an announcement by the Premier League’s chief football officer, Tony Scholes, that players’ celebrations could lead to punishment if they are deemed critical or mocking. How can this league simultaneously laud and long for the shithousery of old and still turn out to be party poopers? How did the same country that reveres the way Neal Maupay and Jamie Vardy wind up their opponents end up drawing the line at a celebration?

Of course, it'd be remiss to ignore the elephant in the room, that there’s a racial bias (or underbelly) to a lot of this. English football has a habit of attempting to knock its most audacious Black ballers down to size. It happened with Ian Wright, Paul Pogba, Raheem Sterling and many others. 

Now Iliman Ndiaye gets a yellow card for doing a ‘seagull’ celebration after scoring against Brighton? If a non-white player doesn’t follow the N’Golo Kanté humble (pun intended) archetype, this country will remind them just how miserable it can be and clip their wings before they can even take flight.

We often hear the media complain about how players are having the personality coached out of them by managers. But if we’re going by some of the discourse in recent weeks, player personality is being culled by the same people who supposedly crave that X factor.

We can’t keep neutering the game and wondering where it all went wrong.