game of the Spanish “Liga” has spread like wildfire around the World
& has been the most discussed Football (Soccer) issue in the past
couple of days. There are opinions of all sorts, some are very extreme,
“overheated” & go as far as to suggest that Pepe be banned from
playing Football, some even have said locked away!
Before SFS goes any further, let it be clear, the actions of Pepe are
unjustifiable & are to be condemned at all levels. It is not the
behaviour that young fans should take as the “norm” or for that
matter any Sports fan, as they have seriously dimmed the prestige of
Real Madrid, Spanish Football & have directly marked the career of a
brilliant & promising Portuguese International defender. With 3 minutes
left of play & his team in a 2-2 draw situation, his foul in the penalty
area on Casquero brought into the mind of Pepe the following
nightmare: that he would be responsible for allowing League ladders
FC Barcelona to escape further on points – 9 if Casquero hadn’t later
missed his penalty & Higuaín not scored the winner 2 minutes
later - thus making it impossible of having any chance at all of clinching
from Barça the League Championship title. The Real Madrid players, &
Pepe in this case, are so singled mindedly focused on the task that it
is a straight case of winning at all costs, defeat does not enter the
equation & the reality of it being otherwise made Pepe “snap”, lose
control, go crazy & do things that has baffled & outraged many as being
outside of the normal conduct of any sportsman yet along a rational
human being. SFS repeats, I am not defeating the actions of Pepe
& agree they should be severely punished, however SFS is making
an effort to place itself – even for a moment – in the skin of Pepe
& feel the circumstances & the pressures that he must have been
under at the time.
This afternoon Pepe has received a 10 match suspension, one of
the highest in Spanish Football history, he will miss the Barça derby,
the rest of the season & part of the other. He may have already
indirectly given Barça the League title, as Real will find it hard to
replace him in defence with a player of his level – with all due
respects to the substitute who that maybe - enough personal suffering
here already do you agree? Added to all this, his Club Real Madrid
will also sanction him & that will have its slice of pain on the man.
The public, the fans & the whole World are calling for his head, his
permanent banning & writing/calling him all sorts of outrageous names
& things that in themselves may also be sanctioned if taken to a legal
court, the man is being crucified. Pepe has reacted to all this by
going out publicly & apologising to Casquero & Albin of Getafe, to his
Club & all the public, brave move under the barrage of “stones” being
thrown at him. He has also accepted to take up immediately
psychological counselling to control his competitive & aggressive
impulses so that his “violence” never appears again. Let’s give the
man another chance, at least, a minimum moment of understanding
before sending him to the “gallows”. The 10 match punishment is
enough & that hurts inhumanly any top level professional sportsperson,
plus he has the “extreme sector” of the public to remind him for the
rest of his playing days “that famous Tuesday night” in 2009.
Here are two videos that everyone should see. The web portal
“YouTube” is full of clips similar & you can have hours of “fun”
searching for more. The first is LEGENDARY Frenchmen ERIC CANTONA
losing it totally & Kung-fuing” a spectator! The second clip is a collage
of various similar incidents throughout Football’s (Soccer’s) recent
history - check out Maradona halfway through the clip; I rest my case
with both examples. By the way I left out Zidane!
Thankfully, we do live in a society with free speech & SFS welcomes
& accepts all opinions & all thoughts, liked or disliked. SFS is simply
contributing to debate & further analysis. Thanks to all the comments
& emails received, they are definitely interesting to say the least :-)
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1 comment:
It was rather interesting for me to read the article. Thanx for it. I like such themes and everything that is connected to this matter. I definitely want to read more on that blog soon.
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