Go soft or go home?

The spotlight of the beautiful game is currently focused on the topic of overzealous tackling, with a spate of unsavoury, unnecessary and downright dangerous challenges leaving players nursing some bad injuries.


Nigel de Jong is a midfield enforcer, sitting in front of the back four to break up the opposition’s developing attacks. However, on Saturday he was not only breaking up attacks, but also breaking Hatem Ben Arfa’s leg and potentially his career. His dangerous, almost two-footed tackle somehow went unpunished by the referee Mark Atkinson. He won the ball, but the nature of him winning the ball was dangerous and reckless. However, it did not go unnoticed by de Jong’s international boss, Bert van Marwijk, who has dropped the midfielder from the Dutch squad for pushing the limits too far.  Some people are applauding van Marwijk for his actions; I for one am backing the move (although why he did not do it after de Jong’s chest high kung-fu kick on Spain’s Xabi Alonso in the World Cup final, where he had appeared to have told the players to try and kick Spain off the park seems perplexing).  Also while he’s at it he could kick van Bommel out of the squad for the same reason. It is baffling how he was not sent off during the World Cup and in last year’s Champions League games against Man United!


In recent weeks, there seem to have been several wince-inducing challenges that were just so unnecessary and in some cases appeared malicious. When Stoke were cruising to victory against Fulham in last month’s Carling Cup clash with injury time trickling away, Stoke’s Andy Wilkinson put in one of the most unnecessary, scything challenges on Moussa Dembele, who up until that point had been one of Fulham’s players of the season; the striker has been out since with ankle ligament damage.  This one particularly grates, simply because it was one of the most unnecessary tackles ever seen. There were seconds remaining in the game and Stoke were two goals to the good and almost certain to progress. The lack of respect for fellow professionals from certain players is crazy!


After going to see Spurs beat Wolves a few weeks ago and seeing Wolves’ match-long ‘anti-football’ tactics, I was overjoyed to hear of Karl Henry’s early exit from their clash with Wigan after another one of his overly-robust challenges. Throughout the game against Spurs, Wolves were cynical; Jelle van Damme’s disgraceful waist high lunge on Carlo Cudicini as he tried to take a quick goal-kick typifies Wolves’ over-aggressive approach.  Henry has recently apologised to his colleagues and the Wolves fans for the tackle (or maybe assault is the more appropriate word), but somehow he forgot to apologise to Jordi Gomez, despite putting his career at risk. I did not like the guy before that much, but he’s certainly not on my Christmas card list now. At least Gomez was able to continue and ironically it was him who scored the first of Wigan’s goals with a quality free-kick.


Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy a good tackle as much as the next football supporter; I appreciate that a perfectly timed sliding tackle can be just as valuable as a goal, but somebody has go to start punishing these players for going too far.  


Newcastle wrote to the FA to ask them to action against de Jong. However, because the referee saw the incident and deemed it fair, the odds of any punishment for de Jong are slim. I know refereeing is a tough job, but there is no reason why referees cannot have key decisions looked at and retrospective action taken.  Referees would be more respected if they held their hands up and said that they had made a mistake after a game and if just justice was done.


I was shocked (but obviously pleased as a Spurs fan) to discover that Tommy Huddlestone did not receive a ban for the elbow on Marco Janko in last week’s Champions League game against FC Twente (retrospective action being possible because the referee did not see the incident).  I cannot understand how they have not banned him. It was a clear elbow, he had two attempts at elbowing him and his facial expression suggested that was his intention. Inconsistencies! All the paying public asks for is consistency. Craig Gardner was sent off for a two-footed tackle, where he won the ball, surely the same should have happened to de Jong! James Collins should have been sent off for cynically taking out Aaron Lennon when he was quite clearly the last defender…I could go on all day, but I won’t do not worry.

Signing off for now, I will be back soon with my possibly useless opinion on another aspect of football. Thanks for reading.