(Extreme land sports) Dealing With Dissent In A Decent Manner
No commentsBy Martin Sejas
Earlier this week, an interesting precedent was set in soccer. And it didn’t happen in the big money spinning leagues of Europe, it look place in Australia’s A-League.
On the weekend, Brazilian player Fabiano, who plays for Melbourne Victory was sent off in disgrace for spitting at another player. And rightly so. Such action is not tolerable in society, let alone on the soccer pitch.
However, it’s what happened in the days following the game which set a new precedent. Following his sending off, Fabiano was made to face the league tribunal and at the end of the hearing, he was suspended for a total of 9 weeks. 8 weeks for spitting plus the mandatory 1 week for the red card.
9 weeks for spitting! And given the shortness of the A-League, it basically means that he misses nearly half the season. Not to mention, he’d just arrived in Australia to ply his trade here.
But it was justified. It was also time to take a stance on such despicable acts of dissent. There is no justification possible for spitting at someone else in a tolerant, well-educated society. Unless, we’re living in the stone ages or in warfare (which we are not), such acts cannot be tolerated.
This ruling serves as a lesson to not just Fabiano, but to other young players, especially those from Generation Y who have big egos and think they can dominate the world overnight. I wrote about this in a previous article in relation to Cristiano Ronaldo (”Cristiano Ronaldo: Victim or culprit?”)
However, some soccer critics do not agree with the harshness of the ban handed down to Fabiano. One of them, Jesse Fink, from the The World Game, thinks that it is harshly excessive in comparison with the bans handed down for tackles in rugby league.
But he shouldn’t be making comparisons with a completely different sport whose problems with dangerous tackles is a constant presence and whose levels of tolerance for such offences are very high. What he fails to understand is that the level of respect and conduct required by a soccer player is different from other sports, hence rendering any comparison meaningless and misguided.
Soccer must be played in the right spirit with the right attitude. It is imperative that authorities are able to control the actions of players that could bring the game into disrepute and damage the image of the game worldwide. For this reason, the A-League tribunal and Australian soccer bosses should be congratulated for being brave enough to stand up to such acts and punishing them accordingly.
Martin Sejas is the chief writer of SportsNewsFootball.com, a leading sports news football website known for its fearless and critical analysis of the major issues affecting the beloved game of football.
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Monday, September 29th, 2008 at 8:50 am and is filed under sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
