Changing the Soundtrack

It's two days after the Ashley Cole tackle on Alan Hutton. Good Friday.

Yesterday Cole "apologized" for the tackle and for his behaviour toward referee Mike Riley. Today we hear that Fabio Capello, on behalf of the FA, will weigh in on the issue of "discipline" in English football in response to the way the entire Chelsea team behaved toward the referee. But we have said this before here: for us behaviour comes second to other issues; for instance, in the case of Zidane's headbutting of Matterazzi behaviour is second to justice. The FA apparently has a new "respect the referee" initiative. But what we would like to see is a "Respect The Game" initiative. This initiative would be quite simple really--and make the referee's job easier too: players, managers, fans, administrators and especially media, would be asked only to respect the "laws of football."

As we said in an earlier post, there wasn't just one noticeable foul in the Chelsea-Tottenham match. There were countless fouls. For us Chelsea's Ricardo Carvalho was the biggest offender in that he did many small things to put striker Dimitar Berbatov off of his game--which the official failed to see or did not want to see. It's another case of a centreback trying to deny talent its rightful opportunity to shine (see Zidane-Materazzi).

We feel that the most effective way to change things is to change the soundtrack of the televised matches provided by the commentators. Like this little track from the Chelsea-Tottenham match:

"The tackles are flying in but it's not so bad really...The players are playing with passion...it's great to see."

Blah, blah.Such commentators provide both the indictment of what is wrong with English football and the opportunity to improve the game. If instead of celebrating an out-dated view of the game, commentators embraced the essence of the beautiful game--the skill, the movement of players and the ball--the game in England could really march forward.

Source > 21.03.2008