It's Tough Out There

Watching the Scunthorpe v Manchester City F.A Cup tie yesterday I had to feel a little sympathy for the Manchester City substitute Greg Cunningham. Cunningham was making his City debut at the age of 18 and was booked two minutes into his debut for what can only be described as youthful exuberance, it was a foul but certainly didn't deserve a booking, just a quiet word from the referee should have sufficed.

Last season during one of Barcelona's meaningless La Liga home games, they won the title with four games to go, Pep Guardiola gave a debut to Marc Muniesa. Muniesa was only 17 years and 57 days old when he came on against Osasuna at the Nou Camp making him the second youngest debutant for the Catalan club. Unfortunately his debut only lasted five minutes when he too fell victim to a piece of over zealous refereeing and left the field in tears. At least he had the satisfaction of being on the bench for the Champions League final later that week so perhaps he forgot the disappointment.

I mention those two simply because it seems that referees these days whilst keen to apply the letter of the law seem further away than ever when it comes to applying either common sense or some sort of spirit of the law. Bobby Moore, Bobby Charlton and Gary Lineker managed to play over 2,100 first class matches between them and amass a total of 3 bookings yet you routinely watch a Premiership match and see the stat that a player has picked up his fifth booking of the season and it's only October!

Referees aren't solely to blame, the two things that stand out a mile in any game on television are firstly the fact that very few players actually know how to tackle these days and secondly there is an almost epidemic outbreak of cheating. Not outright cheating but sly, snidey stuff. Watching the Milan derby last night was one of the highlights of the season so far but the two teams spent an awful lot of time trying to outdo each other in the falling down stakes.

I think a blood vessel must have burst inside Wesley Sneijder's head just before he got his red card. Already pissed off with the ref for getting in his way, he then took umbrage at his team mate Lucio's booking before sarcastically applauding the referee and verbally abusing him. Why did he do it? I can only think of the assertion by Ruud Guillit when once asked why Dutch players have this self destruct button, "Because he's Dutch and he can do it."

Of course Jose Mourinho believes the red card is all part of a greater plot to prolong the title race as long as possible, but then his middle name has always been paranoia hasn't it.

Watching the Rossoneri huff and puff around the pitch like the football equivalent of Dad's Army made you realise what a state Italian football is in these days. If there's a record for the oldest team on the pitch then A C Milan must be close to breaking it, only a youthful right back and the inclusion of Klaas Jan Huntelaar in the dying minutes of the game lowered the average age below 30. The Champions League tie between A C Milan and Manchester United gets more interesting by the week with both teams winning games whilst looking completely useless.

Across Europe and Cristiano Ronaldo managed to score twice and get sent off for the second time this season, this time for breaking a Malaga players nose. Anybody who watches Spanish football will know that it's not unusual for a player to leave the pitch without all his bits intact when Malaga are playing, usually however it's one of the opposition. Malaga seem to have taken the worst excesses of their sizable British support onto the field this year and you just hope they never get good enough to qualify for Europe and meet Arsenal, poor Arsene would explode with indignation.

But of course the biggest story in European football was made at Wembley on Sunday evening when Stephanie Moore (Bobby's widow) and Geoff Thomas drew the final two balls out of the plastic tumbly thing for the F.A Cup Fifth Round. Scummers v Skates. The questions just hung in the air, will Southampton be on lock down for the day? Will Portsmouth football club still be in existence? Will Hampshire Police ask the Home Secretary for additional funding? Will that bloke with the annoying bell ring it for ninety minutes?