“It is unacceptable.” So said Mikel Arteta when Nicolas Pepe was sent off for a needless headbutt in Arsenal’s recent goalless thriller with Leeds United at Elland Road.
Pepe became only the latest player to be sent off for an off-the-ball incident involving a clash of heads that the referee would otherwise not have spotted had it not been for VAR.
And on Wednesday night it looked a certainty that the headbutt was about to claim another temperamental victim when Manchester United midfielder Fred and Leandro Paredes literally went head-to-head early in the Champions League encounter.
Fred turned to meet his jousting rival, leaned in and wriggled his head and neck around in threatening fashion – so much so that Paredes just had to hit the turf.
Yet remarkably, referee Daniele Orsato – upon casting his eye on the VAR monitor – chose not to follow Anthony Taylor’s directive from the incident at Elland Road and instead considered Fred’s actions worthy of nothing more than a booking.
“He’s very lucky,” said the old-school Paul Scholes looking on from the BT Sport plinth inside Old Trafford. “But I‘ve enjoyed it about the game. There’s been a bit of needle about it, a lot of tackles flying.”
Fred would eventually leave the field with a second yellow on 70 minutes after a late challenge trying to sweep up his own mistake while in possession. But he was lucky to even last that long because seeing red for a clash of heads is just what’s in vogue at the moment.
It wasn’t too long ago that players were being sent off regularly for raising their hands to the neck and face of opponents. Didier Drogba infamously slapped Nemanja Vidic in the chin during the 2008 Champions League final, which resulted in the then-Chelsea striker receiving his marching orders.
It looks as though Fred is a very lucky boy ????
— Football on BT Sport (@btsportfootball) December 2, 2020
He appeared to move his head towards Paredes off the ball, the referee took a closer look, and gave a yellow card
Already down a goal, that was a close call for Man Utd… pic.twitter.com/4c2JvDhxGO
Before that, referees in the Premiership – as it was known then – had to deal with players leaving elbows in while jumping for headers. Alan Shearer was particularly adept at ensuring an opposition defender knew who was winning the high ball.
And before that? The classic “tackle from behind” was eventually targeted after, well, a fair too many stamping incidents.
But we don’t see elbows, tackles from behind or raised hands in the game anymore – or not often anyway.
So why has the heaadbutt suddenly come into vogue? One could argue that footballers have always had a tendency to dip their forehead into a lively debate with their playfellows, yet recently the confrontational act has gained more focus because players are taught to keep their hands by their sides in case they see red in more ways than one. Now they square up without an arms-length keeping them apart.
Like two rutting rhinos, the forehead is the only physical weapon then’ve got. And yet even that is now being taken out of the game (for good reason, one should add).
We can blame – or indeed praise – VAR for this. Bar Zinedine Zidane’s effort in the 2006 World Cup final, the headbutt was for decades a snide, innocuous act of aggression that players could get away with. Referees and assistants would find it a lot harder to legislate for a headbutt out of the corner of their eye compared to, say, Johnny Giles’ punch on Kevin Keegan in the 1974 Charity Shield final (an act of violence, by the way, that earned Giles nothing more than a booking).
But the rightful outlawing of punching, elbowing, tackles from behind and slapping doesn’t stop players squaring up to each other. It merely changes the rules of confrontation. Once players know not to raise their hands, they step closer and the head becomes their weapon.
In recent seasons before VAR came into being, English football saw the true evolution of the headbutt. Olivier Giroud’s Boxing Day nut crack on Nedum Onuoha in 2014 was followed a few months later by the furore of Branislav Ivanovic’s “did he, didn’t he” headbutt on James McCarthy. Suddenly there were talks of retrospective punishment – now this was getting serious.
TV cameras spotting incidents the referees couldn’t was one of the main reasons VAR came into being.
And how can you get away with a sly headbutt in an era of VAR? You can’t. While we’ve known for years that the TV cameras pick up everything – and have during this time discovered an uglier side of the game – it is only now, with VAR, that officials can police every inch of the pitch.
And thus when Pepe is sent off for Arsenal for headbutting Gjanni Alioski, it’s no surprise to see Arteta react with such disdain in his post-match TV interviews. You cannot get away with it.
Unless, that is, you’re Fred. How he stayed on the field on Wednesday night remains unclear. There was certainly intent to retaliate to Paredes’ jibes but the Brazilian missed his mark. Thankfully necks aren’t quite as long as arms, and the fact Fred failed to properly seek revenge for whatever was Paredes’ crime meant he was only booked.
Why Fred wasn’t sent down the tunnel to wait for the inevitable Ole Gunnar Solskjaer rollicking no one but referee Orsato can be sure. But it mattered little in the end as the midfielder earned his second yellow after the break for one too many overstretched challenges.
VAR actually saved the midfielder for his first indiscretion, as the referee was able to determine how much contact was actually made with Paredes, rather than simply reacting to a player rolling around on the floor clutching his face.
The decision to let the midfielder stay on the field will certainly raise questions about consistency the next time two players get too close to each other. And it will also pull focus on Solskjaer, who persisted with the ticking time bomb despite the reprieve gifted to Fred before the break.
Follow i sport on Facebook for more Man Utd news, interviews and features
More on Man Utd
- The making of Marcus Rashford: the Man Utd star who never forgot his roots
- 5 contenders to replace Solskjaer as next Man Utd manager
- Why United are prepared to play the long-game in pursuit of Sancho
- Kevin Garside: Well done to Chadwick for reminding us all to be kind
- Man Utd need Cavani to be another Cantona – but even that may not save Solskjaer
from Football – inews.co.uk https://ift.tt/3qofPlC
Post a Comment