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Seeing Red

Dave Bowler

3/20/08

We’ve refrained from rushing to comment on the Eduardo Da Silva / Martin Taylor tackle in the Birmingham versus Arsenal game a few weeks ago that ended in such an horrific injury to the Arsenal striker. Partly because it’s always wise to let the dust settle on such an emotive incident and partly because even now, it’s hard to make any definitive judgment on just went on, especially as the TV companies chose not to show replays.

Taylor collected a red card, which is rather less than the lifetime ban, public flogging and execution of his first born that Arsene Wenger initially called for, the Frenchman later retracting his comments. After all, what would he have said in the heat of the moment had it gone the other way and an Arsenal man
been the perpetrator?

“I was not watching the ball, I was inspecting my shoes. Sole is important in football”.

The Taylor tackle had horrific repercussions, but was it the proverbial “horror tackle”? From viewing it at that moment, then looking at the photographs that have followed, it appears that more than anything else, Eduardo was the victim of his own speed, his own talent. To quote the old joke, Taylor wasn’t late, he simply got there as quick as he could. And therein lies the problem when trying to work out the severity of tackles, the right card to administer and so on.

The game has become so quick that tackle after tackle looks worse than it probably was, though that’s little consolation to the poor so and so left writhing on the ground. For just as attackers get quicker, so do defenders and if the centre-forward moves the ball just that little bit faster, the guy who’s hurtling in hits him with a lot more force than even ten years ago.

The irony is that the game is cleaner than it ever has been - if you can remember back to the days when Norman Hunter and Ron Harris prowled this land, you are probably in fits of hysterics when any of today’s crop of defenders are described as “hard men”. They played in a genuinely brutal age and the authorities, people like Blatter and Platini - who had to play against the likes of Claudio Gentile, the most misnamed man in footballing history - will point, with some justification, to the fact that skilful players are getting greater protection than ever before. And the slew of red cards is part of that solution, or so they say.

The problem is that, as the pace continues to accelerate, as it surely will, defenders will face a world in which they are simply not allowed to go into a tackle for fear of instant dismissal. CristianoRonaldo will be thrilled if football becomes a non contact sport, but will it be football any more? The genius of George Best was to watch him slalom through the minefield as Tommy Smith tried to kill him. If nobody can try to stop Ronaldo with a tackle, where’s the point?

Equally, game after game is being ruined by referees dispensing red cards for challenges that really don’t seem to justify it. Yes, there’s a moment of joy as you see the opposition reduced to ten men, but as a spectacle, your afternoon has just been flushed own the toilet. Ten versus eleven very rarely gives up a good game of football, degenerating either into one sided thumping or a war of attrition that bores the watching thousands out of their minds. And for what?

Take the dismissal of Jason Koumas for Wigan against Bolton last Sunday. Late, yes. But dangerous? It was one footed, what we used to call a forward’s challenge, over enthusiastic, incompetent, but not a tackle where he was trying to maim his opponent. As his manager Steve Bruce said afterwards, “He’s tried to win the ball, it’s one footed and I think that because of the climate we are in, it is leaving the referees in a difficult position. I think if it hadn’t been for the Eduardo tackle a couple of weeks ago then that would have been a yellow card.”

Which brings us back to where we started. Just what is a red card offence? To draw immediate dismissal, surely the foul has to be either cynical - the age old professional foul to deny a goalscoring opportunity - or recklessly dangerous. Otherwise, a yellow card is enough, giving the transgressor warning not to do it again, making him that little bit less valuable to his side as he has to err on the side of caution thereafter, but still keeping the game a contest.

It’s time to draw a distinction, and it’s time to remember that football is a sport where physical confrontation offers up some of its most exciting moments. Otherwise, you might as well go and watch basketball.

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