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Graham Ruthven

Graham Ruthven

Cristiano Ronaldo spends a lot of time in his pants - his pants and nothing else - and so it wasn’t especially surprising that when a rare glimpse was offered into the Portuguese national team dressing room football’s most renowned underwear mannequin was stood posed in nothing but his tight whities.

Mannequin is the correct term, because this was Portugal’s attempt at the so-called Mannequin Challenge - the biggest craze sweeping the internet since the last one. Everyone and anyone with a social media presence has done it, from Jesse Lingard and Paul Pogba to Borussia Dortmund to even Hillary Clinton aboard her campaign plane ahead of the US election. It’s somewhat surprising that Gary Cahill hasn’t done the Mannequin Challenge yet, given that he excels at standing perfectly still, usually when losing sight of his man from corner kicks.

The idea is to create a moment frozen in time. Some have been better at it than others. While Mario Gotze and Andre Schurrle managed to keep their lifelessness lifting weights and pumping iron in the gym Novak Djokovic couldn’t even stop himself from blinking. It’s no wonder he has lost his ranking as world number one. Jamie Vardy and his England teammates failed to appreciate how it doesn’t work on the back page of newspapers, attempting one after scoring against Spain, because a still picture is always a Mannequin Challenge.

Football has occupied itself with the Mannequin Challenge over the international break, because what else is there to do? After two weeks of no club football we’re all bored of Frasier re-runs on Channel 4. Without the Mannequin Challenge club social media accounts would have surely run out of GIFs to tweet by now.

But how many more challenges must we endure? Before the Mannequin Challenge there was the Running Man Challenge. That essentially consisted of a team or group of people performing their own variation of the so-called running man dance to 90s hit ‘My Boo’ by Ghost Town DJs. Football players also joined in with this craze, despite the fact that every game they play is surely a Running Man Challenge. This was something they should have found easy (unless you’re Charlie Adam, of course, who has the turning circle of the Exxon Valdez).

Then there was the Ice Bucket Challenge. At least this had a charitable premise, with the campaign raising more than $100 million over a 30-day period in 2014, funding a number of ALS research projects. It was grating, especially after it had been done by every player with a bucket stowed under their kitchen sink, but the message behind it was admirable. Ronaldo did it in his pants, of course.

Doing these challenges in your undies appears to be something of a theme for footballers, or ex-footballers in David Beckham’s case, who did the 22 Push Up Challenge in nothing but his pants. Like the Ice Bucket Challenge there was a charitable message behind the craze, raising money and raising awareness of post-traumatic stress disorder among former servicemen and women. However, that message was difficult to keep in mind when after about day 10 when your Facebook news feed was nothing but panting men grunting into a camera way too close to their face. Nobody wants that perspective, even if it’s for a good cause.

The same cannot be said of either the Mannequin Challenge or the Running Man Challenge, though. Neither are connected to a charity or a message of awareness. They are a social media craze for the sake of a social media craze and football is all too willing to engage in such futile trends.

Perhaps these challenges stem from the Crossbar Challenge - literally the only good thing to have ever come from Soccer AM. That at least was founded on a footballing skill. The only way the Mannequin Challenge has anything to do with football is if it’s based on those freekick mannequins Keira Knightly spent hours curling freekicks round in Bend It Like Beckham.

It’s understandable that clubs should wish to engage in things that make them more personable, their players more approachable. But these challenges are simply a case of them trying way too hard. Ronaldo might relish the opportunity to show off his abs, but the Mannequin Challenge underlined how football has forgotten how to truly engage with its public. Maybe players should just replay to a few tweets every so often, like real problem, not mannequins.