tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5129770720975986432.post6650494125951986427..comments2023-05-13T09:28:33.746+01:00Comments on Minus the Shooting 2010: We Was RobbedUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5129770720975986432.post-1626452248818108192010-06-22T22:22:10.497+01:002010-06-22T22:22:10.497+01:00Again, Fallon needed to keep his elbows down, but ...<i>Again, Fallon needed to keep his elbows down, but 'uninhibited expression' notwithstanding, it seemed like the Italians had a pretty clear strategy to neutralise him on the high ball by exaggerating any contact and get him carded, and frankly when you need to resort to those kinds of tactics to beat a team that is so clearly outclassed you start to look like passive aggressive bullies.</i><br /><br />Have you ever had the experience of being whacked on the neck by an arm or elbow while jumping for a high ball? One time as a teenager I'm pretty sure I stayed down for five minutes. Accusing Cannavaro or Chiellini of having exaggerated the effects of those two fouls is a bloody big call, it seems to me - they would have hurt. Fallon wasn't sent off after the second one - which I agree with, it would have been harsh, but hey, you're the one who brought up De Rossi in 2006, and he didn't get a second chance, let alone a third one, did he? - and at that point the Italians targeted him. Which, frankly, was the smart thing to do. You can call it passive aggression, or you can call it recognising that when you're playing against opponents that are far bigger than you are, there isn't a lot to be gained by staying on your feet in your average challenge. Nor is very easy, I might add. And perhaps I had my deeply unsportsmanlike glasses on, but I only recall an episode with Criscito that made me go "come on, get up lad". The rest was pretty ordinary. You can criticise the ordinariness of it, I suppose, but how do you make it <i>the</i> story? Wouldn't it be like the Italian press spending the day after a draw against the All Blacks (never.gonna.happen) dissecting the tactics at the breakdown of Ritchie McCaw, and rehashing the life and work in the ruck of Colin Meads?<br /><br />What made the coverage dissonant, to me, is that the game didn't hinge on it at all. The penalty was a penalty more than the goal was a goal, if you have to be honest, and apart from that were there any fouls called that shouldn't have been? Any yellow cards handed out (only three, all to the All Whites) that shouldn't have been? Was any New Zealand player sent off? If it all comes down to "Rory Fallon had to be more cautious than he ordinarily would have in the second half", it seems like a pretty thin basis to claim that anybody was robbed of anything. <br /><br />(All that said, I'm fine with Nelsen's comments, but guess what - they had nothing to do with the game. He was trying to play the ref for the game against Paraguay. Because that's what you do.)Giovanni Tisohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10618534731338616708noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5129770720975986432.post-85745448713384125462010-06-22T16:12:40.227+01:002010-06-22T16:12:40.227+01:00Giovanni, first let me say that I agree broadly th...Giovanni, first let me say that I agree broadly that New Zealanders need to get over it and celebrate their achievement rather than stay bitter. It's football, this kind of thing happens. Both goals were dodgy, and it's how things go. Personally I feel like we won the World Cup twice in the space of a week.<br /><br />But I think you need to put the de Rossi penalty in the context of the broader pattern of Italian behaviour during the match. They were diving, or at least over-exaggerating the effects of contact so much that the ESPN commentator who isn't Ally Mccoist was moved to describe their behaviour as 'deeply pathetic'. Mccoist described it as 'embarrassing to watch'. Yes, Fallon was using his elbows too much, but the Italian players were making the most of it (and it was The Guardian Minute By Minute coverage that was the first I saw to link to de Rossi's red card against the USA in 2006, not any Australasian media). They were also at one point remonstrating with the ref to get a New Zealand player (Smeltz, I think) sent off after the smallest bit of contact, which is deeply unprofessional. <br /><br />Again, Fallon needed to keep his elbows down, but 'uninhibited expression' notwithstanding, it seemed like the Italians had a pretty clear strategy to neutralise him on the high ball by exaggerating any contact and get him carded, and frankly when you need to resort to those kinds of tactics to beat a team that is so clearly outclassed you start to look like passive aggressive bullies. I understand your argument for cultural relativism, but if you're going to argue that then you'll have to accept that, for cultural reasons, others see it very differently.<br /><br />The other part of it, which is probably more important in the ongoing discussion, is that Australasia doesn't have much of a footballing culture. Unlike societies where football is the dominant sport, we don't have much practice at talking about it either in the media or the pub, and thus the vocabulary isn't all that well developed. There are probably only a few hundred people in New Zealand that could have a proper discussion about the decisions that Ricki Herbert took before the tournament and the implications for the onfield strategy, whereas everyone can moan about a penalty decision. The 'we was robbed' narrative is the only one that's going to lead to sustained discussion in the absence of a deeper understanding of the game, because it's exciting, invokes a sense of justice, and it allows us to entertain the unimaginable possibility that we could have just about qualified for the next stage, without having to talk about things in a way that we aren't really able to. Which is a failing, of course, but an understandable one given that, as you say, there are only 25 professional footballers from New Zealand.<br /><br />So no, we wasn't robbed. But we were subjected to a display of very poor sportsmanship that wasn't contained to a single penalty decision, and we don't have to like that. And seeing de Rossi awarded man f the match was bizarre and a little bit insulting. Unfortunately, we have a very difficult time talking about anything else but the most obvious, so it just seems to revert to this admittedly monotonous, vuvuzela-like indignant drone.Jakehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11926193718680225217noreply@blogger.com