Sorry Diomansy, you don’t feature in the article. I’m only using you for what is at best an average pun
[warning: this article contains spoilers]
This week, in an unprecedented (not to mention ridiculous) move, UEFA decided to hand Shakhtar Donetsk forward Luiz Adriano a one-match ban for scoring a goal. But that’s not even the best bit!
The Brazilian is also required to partake in a day of “community football service”, which presumably equates to the punishment meted out to those two happy-go-lucky criminals at the end of Purely Belter.
For those of you unfamiliar with the finest football-themed film this side of Shaolin Soccer, it consists of making tea for an elderly lady whose apartment overlooks Newcastle United’s St James Park stadium. Not bad, you might think, until you realise that leaves you powerless to cover your eyes when Clarence Acuña and Daniel Cordone are on the pitch, for fear of spilling scalding hot liquid down your newly-pressed jumpsuit.
Anyway, this got me thinking. Why should we restrict these punishments to players whose team already turns out in Guantanamo orange, as if to pigeonhole them even further? Why not extend the appropriate (or not) sanctions to others? With that in mind, here are a few more ideas which cinema has thrown my way.
1. After shooting a work experience kid with an air-gun, Ashley Cole should have been required to conduct a real-life re-enactment of the City of God scene where Lil Zé decides which one of two youths to shoot. You know, in an ironic, putting your kid off smoking by forcing him to work his way through a whole pack of cigarettes kind of way.
2. As punishment for what is known in the FIFA rulebook as “not shutting the fuck up”, Jamie Carragher should be ordered to cut his own tongue in half with a pair of scissors, like in Oldboy.
3. During his spell at West Ham, Benni McCarthy ought to have been served the chocolate cake presented to Bruce Bogtrotter in Matilda, to see how hungry he really was.
4. Following years of gruesome fouls, a 60-year-old Roy Keane should be sent back in time 30 years to have his legs broken by his younger self, as in Looper.
5. After his selfish move to the middle-east, Asamoah Gyan will be forced to make an Argo-style sci-fi movie with Stefan Effenberg, Fabio Cannavaro, Mark Bresciano and Ben Affleck.
6. El-Hadji Diouf must come face-to-face with the “cocknocker” from Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, as punishment for being an utter penis.
Any more suggestions? Leave them below the line, get in touch on Twitter (@tomvictor) or shout them at passing strangers on the street.
Pele Confidential is looking for more writers to contribute features, round-ups or anything else.
If you are interested, pitch me an idea or just write a piece on spec, and if it’s good enough it will go on the site.
Weekly league round-ups are always a good way to get started, but if you don’t want the pressure of having to submit copy that frequently then stand-alone articles are just as welcome.
Get in touch by emailing tomvictor87[at]gmail[dot com] or tweet me @tomvictor
When summing up this week’s Premier League programme there is only one place to start.
Not that long ago it looked as though Arsenal had banished the fragility which has plagued them in previous seasons, but their capitulation at home to Spurs suggested nothing has really changed.
Credit to Harry Redknapp for inspiring the second-half comeback which earned Spurs a first win at the home of their fiercest rivals in 17 years, but the game was really about Arsenal snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
They should have been home and dry by half-time but – in scenes reminiscent of their visit to Wigan’s DW Stadium last season – once the fightback begun there was no sign of the Gunners arresting their slide towards defeat.
One team without such fragility issues is Bolton, and Owen Coyle’s side continued their march up the table with a crushing 5-1 win over Newcastle.
Neither Johan Elmander nor Kevin Davies has been particularly prolific while ploughing a lone furrow at the Reebok, yet by bringing the duo together Coyle has formed one of the most dangerous strike partnerships in the league.
Both struck twice on Saturday, with Chung-Yong Lee – one of the most underrated players in the top-flight – getting the other goal for the Trotters. Andy Carroll’s eighth of the season gave the visitors a glimmer of hope but ultimately proved academic.
Just as impressive was Manchester City’s 4-1 win at Fulham. Roberto Mancini’s side have received their fair share of criticism for negative displays but attack was the order of the day, with even the much-maligned Yaya Toure breaking forward to get on the scoresheet.
Mark Hughes’ side, on the other hand, will be nervously looking over their shoulders after the early-season unbeaten run is now starting to look like, well, just loads of draws.
While Lee Bowyer scored the goal, taking advantage of a centre-back in Alex whose pain-killing injection seemingly had side-effects of drowsiness, the star of the show was Ben Foster.
After his unconvincing display for England on Wednesday, Foster proved he is still a viable contender for the national side by keeping out everything Chelsea threw at him and earning his sixth clean sheet of the campaign.
As Birmingham are on the up, their west midlands neighbours are all heading in the opposite direction after defeats this weekend.
The spirit remained from last week’s draw against Manchester United, but Gerard Houllier’s side lacked a cutting edge in the absence of Marc Albrighton.
That result leaves Villa a point ahead of West Brom, who are in freefall with one point from four games.
But the situation remains far from desperate for the Baggies, which is more than can be said for local rivals Wolves.
A fourth successive defeat leaves them on a paltry nine points, although any side would have been hard-pressed to respond to the opening goal from Blackpool’s Luke Varney.
Defeat for Wigan saw them slip into the bottom three, where they have Wolves and West Ham for company.
Saturday’s defeat at Anfield was comfortably the Hammers’ worst performance of the season, which is really saying something given their record of seven defeats and just one win in their opening 14 games.
Liverpool barely needed to break a sweat, racing into a three-goal lead before half-time, and one gets the feeling they could have not turned up for the second half and still scored a couple more without reply, had they so wished.
Danny Welbeck made up for the absence of Asamoah Gyan by scoring both goals for the Black Cats, sandwiched between efforts from Tim Cahill and Mikel Arteta.
But both sides missed golden chances to win the game in stoppage time: first Welbeck snatched at his shot when well-placed, then Everton substitute Jermaine Beckford prodded wastefully over after being put clean through on goal.
Team of the week (4-4-2): Foster (Birmingham); Eardley (Blackpool), Gallas (Tottenham), Johnson (Birmingham), Evra (Man Utd); Holden (Bolton), Meireles (Liverpool), Pedersen (Blackburn), Silva (Man City); Tevez (Man City), Elmander (Bolton)
As you may well be aware, more and more of my articles are cropping up elsewhere. You may even have found this site through one of my other pieces.
Consequently, I have decided the main purpose of this blog will be the weekly Premier League round-ups, but at the same time I do not want you missing out on my work for other sites.
This means from now on I will provide you with a weekly round-up of my writings from across the web, as well as articles from other football journalists and bloggers which have caught my eye over the course of the week.
There will be no weekly Premier League update this week I’m afraid, as I have other matters to attend to.
In the meantime, why not treat yourself by dipping into some of my articles elsewhere.
For those of you into the MLS, my regular column on Footy Matters features a round-up of the postseason playoffs and a selection of longer comment pieces.
And for the rest of you, there’s my column on Caught Offside, which is about – well – whatever I feel like discussing. Last week it was West Ham; this week – who knows.
The more eagle-eyed of you may have spotted my recent Nigel Reo-Coker article on CaughtOffside in the last few days.
I hope this will be the first of many of my articles posted on the popular football site, so it is worth you keeping an eye out there for more of my work.
This does not mean I will be abandoning Pele Confidential. The weekly Premier League round-ups will continue, and I will still post the occasional feature on here.
The Pele Confidential Facebook page is up and running. You can use it to discuss my articles between yourselves, or suggest new topics for me to look at.
I know it is risky to write an article on World Cup talking points ahead of the final, particularly considering Zinedine Zidane’s moment of madness four years ago.
However, in a vain hope that the final will be remembered for footballing reasons alone, I feel now is the time to run through three of the key issues to have arisen over the last month in South Africa.
I just want to add one rider to this article – I shall not be mentioning Vuvuzelas. The debate has been done to death, and I have no reason to bore you any further on the matter. So, without further ado, here are three talking points which have been doing the rounds during the 2010 World Cup.
1. The Jabulani
Don’t get me wrong, I realise in advance of every World Cup we get the inevitable debate about the ball.
But this year I think people may have been within their rights to complain.
I’m not talking about the swerve on the ball, which has become part and parcel of the modern game, particularly now with the regular exploits of players like Cristiano Ronaldo and Keisuke Honda.
Few have tamed the Jabulani as well as Honda
A bigger issue this year has been the overhit passes which have plagued the tournament. It seems as though the shape of the Jabulani is causing it to skid across the turf much quicker than players are accustomed to, taking the sliderule through-ball – often an important weapon – out of many sides’ arsenals.
At the same time, pacy strikers, whose game revolves around such through balls, have struggled to carve out chances. You need look no further than the disappointing campaigns from Torres, Anelka and co for evidence of this.
2. The French débâcle
One of the more embarrassing stories of this World Cup surrounds the very public falling-out between players and staff in the France squad.
Perhaps the whole spectacle was used as a tool to draw attention away from a dismal campaign, beginning with a draw against 10-man Uruguay in arguably the worst game of the tournament (and it had a decent amount of competition) and going downhill from there.
While there is obviously no excusing the behaviour of senior French players, particularly given the example they were expected to set to the millions of fans watching at home, there is a feeling all of this might have been avoided had the French FA parted company with Raymond Domenech sooner.
Many French fans will be happy to see the back of manager Raymond Domenech
Just as Rafa Benitez dined on his 2005 Champions League victory while at Liverpool, Domenech has remained in a job longer than many feel he deserved to, simply on the basis of his country’s performance in the 2006 World Cup.
Even then he was living something of a charmed life, with a strong French side struggling to escape a weak group, before Zidane essentially carried the team through the knockout phases.
Now, I won’t get into the debate over whether Domenech – whose only previous top-flight managerial experience ended in 1993 – is qualified for the job.
Rather I will raise the point that the man once in charge of the France under-21 squad (from which many of his current charges graduated) has been unable to gain the support of his players for the most part. If a team containing Ribery, Evra, Anelka, Malouda and others can go two major competitions without winning a game, it doesn’t take a psychic octopus to work out that something is wrong.
In the 120th minute of Ghana’s quarter-final against Uruguay, Luis Suarez stuck out a hand to block Dominic Adiyiah’s goalbound effort.
As I’m sure you know, Suarez was sent off, Asamoah Gyan missed the ensuing penalty, and Uruguay went through to the semi-finals after a penalty shootout (incidentally, Adiyiah missed the decisive kick).
The furore surrounding Suarez’s actions was immense and well-publicised, yet when Harry Kewell was guilty of the same offence in Ghana’s group game against Australia, not a single word of ill-will was uttered. Could it be that the only reason for the differing reactions is that Gyan scored one of the penalties and missed the other?
The short answer is no.
The long answer? While some will argue Suarez’s actions were no less instinctive than those of Kewell, it is the response of the Ajax striker to which many have taken exception.
Suarez's name will surely go down forever in World Cup folklore
Not only did he irk Ghanaian supporters (not to mention those in other countries) with talk of the hand of God, but he then had the temerity to hound referee Benito Archundia in the third/fourth-place play-off after his free-kick was blocked by a German hand.
It is at least partly a matter of grace, although don’t try telling that to Adiyiah. Had Suarez the humility to admit his act was borne out of instinct, and then show remorse, he would surely have been looked upon with a little more respect. After all, he was punished for the offence, and it is not his fault that Gyan missed from the spot (or that Uruguay won the shootout).
However by revelling in the handball – essentially admitting to cheating to gain an advantage – Suarez has ensured his World Cup will be remembered not for his three goals, but for his one less-than-honourable decision.
Hopefully all gamesmanship will be put to one side tonight, when Holland and Spain run out at the Soccer City stadium. With the world watching, everyone will be hoping the two teams let their football do the talking.
