The Game is Crazy

The football over the weekend has been superb with plenty of incident and outrage. I always have reported that there are three teams on the pitch when it comes to association football. The home and away teams and of course the referee and his assistants. It is fast becoming this season a case of the referee has now become a ring master looking after the animals, yes animals. It is so disappointing that grown men are now cheating and trying to con the officials. I know they have been doing it for many years but this season it seems to have become even more noticeable in the beautiful game. I would like to this week have a look at two incidents involving two of the best referees in Europe. I want to have a look at Mike Dean in the big Premiership game of the weekend at Stamford Bridge and I feel I can not let this blog finish without talking about the horror challenge on Luke Shaw in the game against PSV which looks likely to have finished his season. The man in charge on the night was none other than World Cup Final referee Nicola Rizzoli, a man who I have praised on many different forums over the past season or two.

I have been saying it now for quite a while that Diego Costa is a disaster to referee. The guy is everything that is bad about professional footballers these days. With this in mind I was very interested to see how Mike Dean would handle him in the game between Chelsea and Arsenal last Saturday. To my disappointment Mr Dean was led a merry dance by the player and instead of the referee being in control, Diego ruined the match for him with his antics. Where the referee failed to stamp his authority all over the game was when Costa was fouled early on in the game and had the audacity to make the imaginary yellow card sign to the referee, Mr Dean should have stamped out any nonsense there and then and in fact should have yellow carded the Chelsea forward. Once he missed this opportunity his game was going to be an uphill struggle and eventually Costa was going to drop him right in the brown stuff. Having failed to see the Chelsea player slap out at Koncielny, matters got worse as again Mr Dean failed to take control of a situation which ended up with Arsenal defender Gabriel been sent off. I will agree the Arsenal defender was stupid to get involved but the referee let the two players walk half the length of the field abusing each other and he should have sorted it long before it needed a red card. In my opinion there was only one way this was going to end. Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho thought after the game that Diego was man of the match, well he certainly caused enough problems so as to cause havoc for the referee and yes he did win Chelsea the match by conning the referee into sending off a fellow professional. In my opinion this is exactly the sort of stuff that is ruining our game. I would like to think the FA will have a look at the whole incident early next week and hopefully slap a ban on the Chelsea player.

During the week Manchester United went away to play PSV in the Champions League. It unfortunately was a bad night all around for the Manchester club, not only did they lose but the game saw Luke Shaw pick up an awful leg break after been involved with a tackle from PSV player Moreno. I actually thought on the night that referee Rizzoli made an awful mistake by not giving a penalty and sending off the home team player. My phone was hopping on the evening with many of my contacts asking how could it not have been a red card. The only answer available to me was the referee made a huge mistake as the tackle ticked every box laid down in the rules to see a player dismissed. One thing I will say in the referee's defence is that nobody claimed the penalty or the red card and this could have swayed his mind. I spoke with two FIFA referee's the following morning and both were in agreement that the referee got it wrong but they could understand why. It just goes to show you that even the best referee in the world is human and can make a mistake.

It was an interesting week and very controversial all around. Maybe next week things will improve and controversy will be thin on the ground, but I would not hold my breath on that one. As I always say if you are out and about watching your team I do hope controversy stays far away from you. Until next week enjoy your football.