Board index \ Irish Sport \ Football

It's been a tumultuous old week for the professional arm of the beautiful game. It all started with Wayne Rooney's 'jostle' with James McCarthy and continued right through the week. Celtic and Rangers players and management made idiots of themselves with their behaviour in Celtic Park and on Sunday last, there was more controversy during the Liverpool and Man United game.

There was nothing controversial about the scoreline or the deserving nature of it but a few tackles went in that should have been punished with red cards.

Refereeing standards were all the rage in the past seven days. Should Rooney have been red-carded against Wigan? Yes. Likewise, Luiz should have walked for Chelsea on Tuesday night and Carragher and Rodriques similarly on Sunday.

But you analyse any game of football with a plethora of cameras from a plethora of angles and the outcome will always be the same. They (the referees) get as much right as they do wrong. They're human after all.

The criticism referees are facing appears to be on the increase every week. It is a worrying development and it does make you wonder where it will all end.

Remember back to last summer when a group of Louth supporters took exception to a refereeing decision and the referee was physically attacked. He wasn't hurt, but he could have been.

That's what can happen when supporters feel they were seriously wronged, and managers have a certain responsibility when it comes to speaking out against them.

The Arsenal manager is supposed to be an intellectual but there was nothing too bright about his use of the word 'disgust' when he was asked about a couple of decisions that went against his team on Saturday. I suppose he was intelligent enough not to use the word in the same sentence as the word 'referee', but the listener knew exactly what he meant.

Likewise, Ferguson was out of order again (emphasis on the word again) in the post-match interview following the game with Chelsea. Last year, he questioned the fitness of an official; last week he wondered aloud about the fairness of a referee.

It's appalling stuff really, all this intimidation of officials by people who operate at the highest level of the game. There is a sense, of course, that the authorities don't have the courage to really take on the powerful in the game.

A season ticket holding friend sat behind the away dugout at Stamford Bridge on Tuesday night and he watched as Ferguson spent the game outside his technical area. The fourth official didn't even bother to tell him to step back inside. For God's sake, you can't even do that in the Mayo League!

The disciplinary measures these managers face are a bit of a joke. Handing a multi-millionaire manager a €50,000 fine is pointless. Banning him from the dug out is equally pointless. Both achieve absolutely nothing.

The only thing that matters to managers at that level is the accumulation of three points after 90 minutes. All the rest is irrelevant.

How to hurt them and make them think about their behaviour and their responsibility to the game is to dock them points. Of course, there will be legal teams waiting to pounce the minute the penalty is handed down, but the authorities need to take a stance.
Football is a wonderful game and when properly played there is no greater spectacle. But a lot of what happens in the modern game is ugly and distasteful and has no place in the sport.
Managers have a huge role in ensuring the game stays beautiful but for many of them, the lines get blurred and they lose sight of their responsibilities to the sport as a whole.

Hitting them where it really hurts might be the only way to rid the game of this dreadful habit of intimidation and bullying that the officials must endure every time they cross the white line.

Perfect antidote

This week's games in the Champions League offer the prospect of the perfect antidote to the ugliness of the past week.

Barcelona and Arsenal should be quite a game, particularly if the first leg is anything to go by. We had a hunch in this column a few weeks ago that Arsenal would prevail over the two legs but we're not so sure now.

Arsenal are going through a bit of a bad patch and they do have some injury worries. They will have to defend really well to keep Barca from scoring and there must be some doubt about their ability to do that.

They're also likely to have to score and they haven't been doing much of that lately. On the face of it, Arsenal appear to be really up against it and it's hard to see Barca not overturning the deficit.

Similarly, don't rule out AC Milan overturning their one-goal deficit when they play Spurs at White Hart Lane. Spurs conceded three against Wolves on Sunday, hardly a ringing endorsement of their defence, and they will be under even more pressure against Milan.

One thing that does appear certain about this game is that there will be goals aplenty. Spurs are so full of pace and creativity going forward it's impossible not to see them scoring. How they fare at the other end of the pitch will probably determine their future in the competition this season.