More About Not Bradford City
The technical debate - the reasons why a decision has been given or not - I love. I got my teeth into Aaron Wilbraham’s almost goal against City at the end of the season loved the debate between fans. The reasons why. The knowing the rules. The knowing football.
So when The Dutch squared a ball to Ruud van Nistelrooy who stabbed in I though offside. My attention was drawn to a player on the floor behind the goal, the replay showed that he would technically still be involved in play - according to rule 14, got to love rule 14 - and thus the goal should stand.
A remarkable bit of refereeing. The correct decision. Justice is done.
Yet something does not ring true and for a while I change the Blue shirts to Claret and Amber in my head and try empathy and it comes to me. Last season City were forced to defend with a man down in our own six yard box - technically the Referee should have stopped the game because playing on was dangerous - and that player played all onside.
I recall at the time talking of the technicalities of the decision that should have been but was not made then and were I Italian I’d no doubt be speaking of the same today. Of course Rudd van Nistelrooy - the master of offside - is allowed to stab the ball home and is rendered onside by a prone Christian Panucci but should he have?
Morality has little sway in football but using an injured player to gain an advantage - while legal - is hardly fair and certainly not laudable. Van Nistelrooy is technically right but wrong in so many other senses.
The pain of football is that were Ruud to ignore the chance he is equally likely to have seen his team suffer from similar. Least we forget that the Italian team that claims the crown as World Champions represents a League and an FA which allows AC Milan to represent it in the Champions League the season after they have found them guilty of match fixing and hands out punishments to Juventus that would hardly prevent a repetition of the systematic and persisting cheating of the Old Lady of Turin.
The woe of football is that rules have to be constructed around the idea that cheating them will become inevitable and that no one expects fair play. Should Ruud pass that goal up because Pannuci is injured? Pannuci played on.
The tragedy of football is that we expect so little from it.
England are - as I type - strolling to a win over Trinidad & Tobago currently having put three past Clayton Ince but missing David Beckham’s passing in the second half of a friendly we are playing to allow us to make better mates with FIFA’s number two Jack Warner.
That yellow card for Steven Gerrard in the first half was probably about that too.
Warner is second to Sep Blatter the Brazilian who wants to implement a six plus five policy that would mean that teams of all nations must have at last half dozen nationals on the field with up to five from overseas. It will never work - we are told - because of European Law let alone the will of the big clubs that tend to have a say in these things.
Blatter is looking into the proposal and it is very doubtful he will get it past the EU although at present England and other leagues have a eight plus three policy where the eight are European Union passport holders and the others can be made up of those without. Donovan Ricketts, Omar Daley and Willy Topp are three. Blatter may end up pushing on that policy that will mean that in Germany and France you must have six Italians and Englishmen (or Germans and Frenchmen) and can fill the team with those world wide.
However Blatter trump card in these circumstances - and his move that would change the game - would be to accept the restrictions of the EU in those countries and not in others meaning that those in Africa, in Argentina, in Australia, in America will be bring their own talent through.
So as the English and Spanish fill leagues with the cream of Europe the league in Argentina is building up their squad. The Japanese J League has many, many Brazilians but is credited as improving the quality of the national team and the K League in South Korea does the same. Should you be of the believe that Blatter’s plan would improve national teams then how many national associations in the EU will worry as improvements in countries like Mexico, in South America, in the USA start to make wins in intercontinental games harder to come by.
The best players from the top European nations are always going to get games and the likes of Italy are secure in the idea what they will get their first eleven playing first team football at a top side but will top 25 ranking sides Sweden, will Poland, will Russia feel the same when a raise in quality means that they are slipping down? What about top 15 sides like Scotland and England?
Of course this all depends on the belief that six+five will improve a national side but if Blatter is right and it does then how long until the Europeans who stand against it begin to become advocates