It’s a big game for Leicester at Liverpool on Sunday – first against third in the Premier League going into the weekend. I see that Leicester also top the table for penalties won in the top flight this season with eight, and Jamie Vardy has scored five of them.
Vardy has won four of those penalties himself, which is as many as Liverpool have had – and they’re joint-second on the list for penalties awarded. My advice to any defender facing Vardy is that when he’s running at you in a 50-50 it’s actually a 60-40 for him because of his speed, so they must try to stay on their feet as long as they can.
In fairness to Vardy, if you’re running at pace and someone touches you, you’re unbalanced. But players like him and Liverpool’s Mohamed Salah are “clever” – they wait for the defender to stick their leg out and go over. And it’s not just those two.
When it comes to diving, I actually get more concerned about when it happens outside the box and the message it sends to kids about resilience. When you see people dive and limp around for ages when there’s clearly nothing wrong with them, that’s not saying resilience.
I don’t want to go back to the days of playing with your leg hanging off but kids see these players go down when there’s nothing wrong with them. Now we’ve got to the point where players can’t touch each other because they’ll roll around like an Oscar-winning actor. I do wonder if I played players’ antics back at them, in front of their kids, whether their kids would laugh at them and they’d be embarrassed. I think most of them would be embarrassed but would respond, “Well, he touched me so I fell over and it’s up to somebody else to give the penalty.”
The first person I remember diving to win a penalty against me was David Speedie at Chelsea. It was a league game at Stamford Bridge in October 1985 and he went over my hand and got a penalty and I got booked. I remember it well as I got a second yellow card in the second half and was sent off.
Morally, I do think it’s wrong but your instinct as a player is to try to get something for the team and it’s up to the ref to give it or not. Could they stamp out people diving for penalties? Clear rules would help – if it’s not a penalty, yellow-card them.
Unfortunately, the rule changes have made it worse and VAR is no help. In fact, for me it’s the worst thing that’s been brought into football. Why should decisions be any different when you go upstairs – after all, there’s still a human watching that telly upstairs.
Yes, the humans on the pitch don’t see the same angles, and yes, they don’t see it in slow motion but it’s still open to the interpretation of a person watching a screen.
The message is “we can’t trust those three humans on the pitch but what we’ll do is give someone a telly and we’ll trust them” and that must put the referees on a psychological downer from the off. I’m sure some referees are decent but we’ve loaded them with pressure with so many pundits, so many cameras, so many broadcasters, so many big teams that want a decision their way… oh, and their well-paid job is on the line.
For me, VAR was only brought in to keep clubs with loads of cash happy so they never got the wrong decisions. Yet normally the bigger teams seem to get the better decisions anyway and, as we’ve seen with Project Big Picture, they aren’t interested in the game really. These clubs who call themselves the “Big Six” are like the Tories: no leadership, only in it for themselves, want to keep all their money and f**k the rest. And as with diving, what message does that send out to our kids?
Vardy for England
Let me end on a positive note about Vardy as I don’t half admire his work ethic. Whether he’s having a good day or not he’s a grafter, and all the best players are grafters.
He’s not going to beat three men and smash it in the top corner but if I was Gareth Southgate, he’d be one of the first names in my squad for the Euros.
from Football – inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/3kQ46bm
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