The police investigation into Thomas Partey on five counts of rape and one count of sexual assault, relating to three separate women, has been one of football’s open secrets for precisely three years.
He was first arrested in July 2022. The law of this land had preserved his anonymity, but you would have had to be hiding under a rock to work in the industry and not know.
Though he denies the charges levelled against him, there is a prosecution case to be aired. The most cursory knowledge of our legal system tells you that since 2022 there had been a possibility that the footballer under investigation might eventually be charged.
Pending any acquittal, the idea of our children drawing his name from one of Topps’ packs of trading cards would be deeply unwelcome.
Until any such acquittal, it goes without saying that a player facing five charges of rape should not be promoted or celebrated. But Topps have made Partey a collectors’ item.
On Tuesday we discovered that Partey, shown the door by Arsenal in June days before the Metropolitan Police charged him — he is due to appear before Westminster Magistrates on August 5 — will appear on one of their official Premier League trading cards for the 2025-26 season.
Prepare yourself for the Topps communication team going into overdrive now — insisting that the player list for the new season of Topps cards was finalised in May, when Arsenal were still negotiating over a potential new contract with Partey. That print and production were wrapped up before he was charged. Nothing to see here.
The unpalatable truth is that football has legitimised Partey all along, in a way that no other industry would conceivably have done.
Innocent until proven guilty, most certainly, yes, but with such serious offences under investigation, a suspension would be inevitable in any other line of business. Perhaps on full pay, which in Partey’s case was £200,000 a week.
Or perhaps on no pay. Most men working in an industry which brought them into contact with women would expect to be out of the building if facing allegations like that.
We’re talking about football, though, and it’s been business as usual for Partey. He was arrested on July 4, 2022, released on bail, and played 12 days later in a friendly against Everton in the US. In the course of the first season after his arrest, Mikel Arteta used him for 2,694 minutes across 40 games, important enough for on the pitch and good for the opening goal in a north London derby against Tottenham.
Arsenal have gone so far as to rubber stamp his use in the trading packs and even this week, Arteta said he was ‘100 per cent’ sure the club followed the right processes when dealing with his former midfielder. ‘There are a lot of legal matters that are very complicated so I cannot comment on any of that.’
There goes football, lost in its parallel universe and self-justification, blind to the realities and the optics. Flatly ignoring the fact that the sight of our sons and daughters trading Partey’s image any time soon is, as things now stand, deeply unattractive.