Someone please tell me Captain Horace Burrell was misquoted when he was reported to have said that the Jamaica Football Federation will leave open the doors for convicted felon Marlon King to return as a player!

I hope what Captain said was the door was firmly closed behind Mr King and the only Reggae Boyz game he will see again is either on television or after buying a ticket.

Certainly nobody should even be thinking of Marlon King’s return to play for any Jamaican team after his disgraceful behavior.

Of course no one is perfect and we all will make mistakes and yes, we should all be given another chance to make good, but I am not buying Captain Burrell’s argument which runs thus:

“He has paid the penalty dearly and he has already served a hefty penalty for his actions and, therefore, we should try to rehabilitate him than to try and destroy him. We must help him to build back his life and this is what we believe in. Football is not only about senior players kicking the ball on the field, but we have to help them in every aspect and in every phase of their lives.”

What I am hearing is “if he can score goals for us we will take him back, to hell with everything decent.”

There is not enough space in this column to list King’s misdemeanors on and off the field.

I believe that King has disrespected Jamaica and the JFF and that for that, he should never have been allowed to wear another Jamaica shirt.

Yet when Burrell regained the JFF office, he not only recalled King to the team but named him captain, a slap in the face of every decentJamaican.

This I suspect had more to do with getting back at Boxhill than anything else.

And how did Mr King repay Burrell’s vote of confidence?

By cursing the coaching staff when he was substituted in a blow-out win against the Bahamas at the national stadium.

We must note that in 2006, the other two players who were out with him, Jamal Campbell Royce and Jason Ewell apologised…not King.

But Burrell is known to get his own way.

Ironically the same people who voted overwhelmingly in 2006 to ban King were the same people who without any further evidence to the contrary or even an apology, voted by the same margin to lift the ban.

Maybe Burrell is our own version of Julius Caesar, wanting to be surrounded by fat men who are so busy overeating, that they have no time to think for themselves.