Sunday, February 12, 2012

A Week is a Long Time in Football

It's been said that a week's a long time in politics, but after the week we've seen in football I think we could that about the beautiful game also.

There was the Harry Redknapp saga with court and the taxman, where Redknapp was cleared of any wrongdoing.

The England manager, Fabio Capello, spit his dummy out of the pram because the FA took the decision out of Capello's hands and sacked John Terry as Captain. Terry had already previously been demoted as captain by Capello himself, but it seems Capello is a slow learner.

Having said all this maybe the Terry thing was just a good excuse to jump before the European Championships. Capello might have reasoned that England wouldn't get very far anyway and he'd rather leave on a higher point than rock bottom.

Somehow I suspect if Capello was the Spain manager and the same captaincy fiasco had arisen Capello would have still been manager.

Let's face it, here in England we have a habit of paying people over-inflated salaries for failure, look at the banks for instance.

Then, on Saturday, sulky Liverpool player Luis Suárez refused to shake the hand of Patrice Evra in the pre-match line up. This was despite the fact that both Manchester United and Liverpool had agreed to the customary handshakes. Suarez is still smarting over his ban for racism.

Kenny Dalgleish is sadly not as strong as Sir Alex when it comes to keeping his players in check, and as Ferguson himself commented after the match Suárez has shown himself a disgrace to Liverpool football club.

BBC pundits were also critical of Suarez. And rightly so.

Oh, and the game finished up 2-1 to United, courtesy of Wayne Rooney, and a goal back by Suarez.