Hmmm. Here's a question for you. Who would you less like to see on a football pitch?
(a) Chelsea and Serbia defender Slobodan Rajkovic, banned for one year for spitting at a referee during the Olympic Games
(b) Newcastle and England midfielder Joey Barton, banned for six matches for violently assualting a team-mate, leaving him with a suspected detached retina, cuts and bruises "looking like the Elephant Man"
Someone at FIFA probably needs to sit down, have a look at these two cases and have a sensible think about their sentencing process for football offences.
[thanks very much to Ian for the links]
2 comments:
How long did Diouf get for his spitting incidents? I think an ideal punishment would be a 1-year stint in the Sunday leagues. Spit in Wild Jim McGarry's face on a Sunday morning when he's nursing a hangover and you'll end up looking like one of Barton's ex team-mates.
Frankly, I'd have neither. I can only think that Barton's ban is so short as it didn't take place on a competitive pitch in view of spectators. For some reason this makes things worse.
If it weren't for the financial side of things, I'd have sacked him. And I still believe we should be able to and recover his transfer fee from *him* as it's his fault he's been banned. Hope he gets his driving license taken off him as well, the prick.
Surely spitting at the referee represents a fundamental breakdown in the relationship between officials and players and needs to be treated incredibly harshly to prevent it happeneing again. If there's no respect for officials, what's the point?
Beating up a team mate in a private training session, whilst an unpleasant assault (which was dealt with through the courts), doesn't fundamentally harm the game in the same way, no matter how unsavoury it may be.
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