". . .Fortunately, after days of ignoring Materazzi's remarks, FIFA has agreed to open a disciplinary hearing regarding what he said. Until then, here is FIFA's lesson for those hundreds of millions of children who watched the match and to whom Zidane apologized: You children should not head-butt your opponents and you should not pull their shirts, but if you want to call their mothers and sisters whores, that's alright."
So why did he head-butt Materazzi? Wouldn't a pop in the mouth have been more satisfying? (Remind me to post about soccer in America-- I am a fan.)
Here is a core tidbit from the above post that gets at soccer's difficulties in the U.S.:
"The flow of play was repeatedly halted so that the referees could punish shirt-pulling, hard bumping and kicking an opposing player's toe. Unfortunately, the referees' crackdown did not include the much-despised practice of diving (collapsing to the ground while pretending to have been fouled). At the last World Cup in 2002, the referees did punish diving, much to the delight of soccer fans the world over. This year, however, diving was rarely punished, and outraged fans fumed as this form of cheating proliferated. The BBC even compiled a montage of the World Cup dives of Portugal's Cristiano Ronaldo. Of course, FIFA did not even consider punishing players who verbally insult their opponents, a practice which is apparently considered nothing more than good clean fun."
No comments:
Post a Comment