Not sure why there is a McDonalds sign in the picture I found above, but the Community Shield is back and I'm lovin' it. The two best teams in England - Chelsea v. Manchester United tonight at 3pm UK time- I have a feeling it is going to be huge. Both teams will want to make a statement to the other as well as the rest of the league that they are the ones to beat this season.
It has been a summer of big change in the Premier League. There are a lot of questions to be answered: Will Aresene Wenger's reliance on youth cost his side and his job? Can Manchester City still suck? Will Everton's cool new jerseys make them the best club in Merseyside? But the two most important questions have to be: Has Ferguson done enough to replace the genius of Ronaldo? And can Ancelotti re-invigorate an ageing Chelsea back to the top where it belongs? Of course these questions won't be answered tonight (Michael Owen- you're joking right?! Hail King Carlo!), but the game should provide a good hint of what is to come in this year's edition of the English Premier League.
No I'm not talking about Didier Drogba's behaviour after last night's Champions League semi-final between Chelsea vs Barcelona (I'll touch on that later), but rather the performance of the match's Norwegian ref. Yeah refs are human and yeah they make mistakes, but way too many were
made last night for such a high profile and important match. Everyone who watched the match has to admit that at least one penalty appeal, maybe as many as 5 if you're a Chelsea fan, should have been given. If you don't agree you don't understand football. Come on be honest Chelsea haters. I'll be the first to admit the red card on Eric Abidal was a complete joke, he should have been sent off in the first half hahaha.
Now I'm not writing this to debate whether the ref cost Chelsea the game. I am a Chelsea fan so my opinion is obvious. I simply want to raise a couple of questions that I think UEFA's Michel Platini and his continental cronies need to answer.
First of all what the hell was a Norwegian ref doing on the field to start with?! Maybe the gold watch and house in the south of France had nothing to do with Platini's anti-English football conspiracy. The ref does look a bit like the great bald-headed Italian ref
Pierluigi Collina- from behind at least. Maybe that's what got him the
job. I have nothing against Norway but their domestic teams are definitely not part of the first division European scene yet. The big-money, world-wide audience levels of pressure found in England, Spain, Italy, Germany, etc just don't exist there. The Champions League is the showcase tournament of Europe's top football clubs and so it should be for Europe's top refs. I'm not saying stop Norwegian refs from refereeing in the earlier rounds, that's fine with me. I'm just saying that until a Norwegian team can even make semi-finals of the Champions League their refs have no reason to be there.
That brings me to my second question. Why can't football finally embrace instant replays like most sports have been doing for years? I mean come on this is the most popular sport in the world we're talking about. Matches like this just have too much riding on them to rely solely on the eyesight of three guys Norwegian or otherwise. The argument of time-wasting no longer applies as technology allows decisions to be made within seconds. Besides, given the amount of time players spend moaning to the ref and rolling around feigning injury I bet replays would actually make the game flow faster. Throw a TV in front of a fifth official hidden away in a secret room somewhere (the fourth is busy enough with substitutions and time-keeping- ha) and there you go. The offsides rule might be a bit too complicated for football's technophobic governing bodies to begin with, but surely they can give the ref some help with goal-line and penalty decisions. The sad thing is the big egos in charge think an extra ref behind each goal will make for less controversy. Idiots.
Alright so that's my rant. Now for Drogba's behaviour.
I'm sure there are a lot of people hating on Drogba right now, but give the guy a break. Did he get in the ref's face? Yeah. Did he swear? Yeah. Big deal what's new in football. Like Gus Hiddink touched on in his post-match interview- the pressure last night was intense, the adrenalin was pumping and the emotions were raw. Drogba overreacted, but he didn't touch the ref. Spare a thought for the baggage the man carries as well: four semi-final losses in the last six years, a sending off in the final's loss last year, easy chances gone begging in each leg of this year's semi-final, at least two blatant penalties waved away in last night's match. Yeah most of it is his own making, but it's still baggage. Why not leave some of it on the field?
I am a huge Drogba fan, but I'll admit his on-field antics are a bad look. I wish he would stay on his feet more. What can you do though? Play-acting is sadly a part of modern football. Hopefully Drogba will finally learn his lesson the hard way when he realizes that probably at least two minutes of last night's injury time can be attributed to him. Then again maybe he will never learn his lesson. Yet who can blame him- the world's best player, as voted by sport journalists, is worse than he is.
Well I think that's quite enough, but let me finish with this thought. People should not expect football players to be the moral meter
sticks for society (that job's already been taken by Rugby League players). Football players get paid crazy amounts of money to play
football and entertain us- that's it. We expect perfection from them on the field. Let's not get carried away with asking them for lessons in morality as well. That's expecting too much. Face it- football is entertainment and they are simply entertainers. Last night's match showed that it's hard to beat the beautiful game when it comes to entertainment- awful ref, dives and verbal abuse included.
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