Madeleine McCann Is An Everton Mascot

MADELEINE McCann is now an official Everton FC mascot. The club has printed T-shirts.

Shirts, emblazoned with pictures of Madeleine McCann, are being handed out ahead of Everton FC’s Europa League tie with Portuguese team Benfica. They have been created to highlight the campaign to find the child, who was three when she vanished while on holiday in Portugal in May 2007.

Benfica play in Portugal. Win it for Maddie, Everton. Can Our Maddie inspire? It might catch on. What team did Ben Needham support? Keith Bennett?

Congratulations to the McCanns for keeping their daughter in the public eye. But who does not crave for them to find her; to be left alone? Right now, their hunt for their daughter exists as a public spectacle. You wear the T-shirt to show that you care. You display a shallow sentiment. Others join in. You all feel it. Only you don’t. Not really. You go through the motions, afraid to say, “No, I don’t feel much at all.”

Every fan who bought a ticket can collect a T-shirt, which has the words “We’re Still Looking For You” on it.

And you thought Evertonians were just looking for a decent centre half.

A total of 6,000 shirts have been produced by the club – 3,000 in English and 3,000 bearing the message in Portuguese.

It’s all horribly mawkish. Anorak was there when Liverpool fans commemorated the 96 who died in Hillsborough. It was poignant and noisy. And it was relevant. This is something else:

Everton chairman Bill Kenwright said: “I will never, ever forget that image of a beautiful, smiling child in an Everton shirt.”

And you thought a missing child was painful enough; even though the media were turned on by her blue eyes and blonde hair. And you also might have thought fans were on there way to watch a game of football, excited at a chance to escape the pains of life for an hour and an a half, with a break for half time. But you should know different:

Fans with a match ticket can pick up a free T-shirt from Goodison Park or Liverpool Airport before embarking on their flight to Portugal.

Let us know if you got one and why you did; and why you didn’t. What, you didn’t get a T-shirt and wear it for Our Maddie? What’s the matter with you – don’t you care?

An anecdote: When Princess Diana was eulogised at Wesmintster Abbey, two Japanese people were laughing in Green Park, enjoying the sun. One began talking on a phone. A woman near to your writer moved across, hung up their phone call and asked them, rhetorically: “Don’t you have any shame?”

When we advertise our grief and care in public for someone we never met and never knew, we do so to reveal more about ourselves than the subject. We display signs of mourning sickness.

Spotter: Yampster

Madeleine McCann: The Story In Pictures

Anorak

Posted: 22nd, October 2009 | In: Key Posts, Madeleine McCann | Comments (20)