We certainly had a surfeit of football over the Christmas and New Year holidays, with enough contentious incidents to fill this column for weeks to come. I particularly say
'contentious' and not 'controversial' because it is only the players and in particular the managers aided by the media, who tried to turn them into controversial decisions.
A classic example of this happened in the game before Christmas at the Emirates' Stadium between Arsenal and the current Premiership leaders, Liverpool. Never mind the football, the talk all seemed to be about the sending-off of Arsenal striker Emmanual Adebyor after two yellow cards.
Adebyor first looked incredulous as referee Howard Webb produced out of his pocket a yellow card followed by a red one and then Adebyor pulled all sort of faces as if trying to suggest that Webb had lost the plot. Our favourite Frenchman,
Arsène Wenger protested violently to the fourth official on the touchline, as if that was going to do any good.
The only real question to ask is why either of them
imagined that the tackle by Adebyor was going to get anything other than a yellow card. In fact it was not too dissimilar from the one that earlier had Webb reaching for his notebook, so surely it couldn’t have come as too much surprise.
For those who haven’t seen the tackle in question let me describe what happened. Adebyor was facing his opponent, Liverpool’s right back Alvaro Arbeloa, who had the ball at his feet. Adebyor went in feet raised about halfway up his opponents shin but at the same time he turned which resulted in two things happening. First his backside heaved Arbeloa off the ball and also as he turned, his arm swung round hitting Arbeloa in the face.
Really what we saw was three offences in one movement. First of all, the high foot raking down the opponents shin. I don’t think I need dwell on that. Then there was the pushing with the backside. This is something that often happens during games although executed a little differently. Players put their leg across the opponent who has the ball and then knock him off it with their thigh or backside. They fail to accept that this is at least pushing, which is a direct free kick offence. So many players think that pushing can only be committed with the hands or arms. Players sometimes hold their arms above their heads when close behind an opponent, to indicate that they are not using them and then push the opponent in the back with their chest.
It’s not disputed that Adebyor’s flying hand caught the Liverpool player in the face but Arsenal complained, perhaps with some justification, that the Liverpool player made it seem worse than it was. This is something that annoys referees because it often seems that they have been conned but the fact is that the offence has been committed, all else is exaggeration.
After the game Wenger was still ranting about the decision by Howard Webb.
'Neither booking was justified’, he said. ‘It’s a joke, just unbelievable. We had “be a Gooner, be a Giver” today and you could say the referee was a Gooner. He was a Giver because he gave us two yellow cards we did not deserve.” (Can anyone explain what that was all about?)
Referees have long joked about Wenger’s dual vision because when his players get away with something, he always claims he wasn’t in position to see what happened but when they are penalised he sees everything perfectly from the dugout. But this was not a controversial decision. It was a perfectly correct decision by one of Europe’s top referees. Moreover it was simply a pathetic excuse for the behaviour of the Arsenal player, so why do newspapers even bother to give it
space?
Dick Sawdon Smith
Back
To Contents
© R Sawdon Smith 2009