To Liverpool fans, sunday’s loss was cushioned with the return of Kenny Dalglish . A hero and legend to Liverpool fans. After the game,us liverpool fans looked at the end result with disappointment that we lost and pride with how the team performed.We had the right to be optimistic, the passion was back, the King was back and more importantly the will to win was finally back to Liverpool football club.
Sadly Sunday’s game will always be remembered as the day Howard Webb’s decisions helped ruin the Fairy tale return of one of the clubs most beloved Idols, against one of the clubs most fiercest rivals. After taking days to think and dwell back on the game, i asked myself ” what were we really angry about?” were we Liverpool fans just bitter about the magical night it would have been had we won?…Maybe . I thought to myself how would i have felt if it had gone the other way around. If we had received the 29th second wrongful penalty and they had their most influential player sent off in the first half. Would the Man utd fans have been bitter and angry at Webb? Yes, most defiantly ! Would we have ended the game thinking, ” Oh that was sad,i wish we’d won fair and square” NO ! I’d have been doing back flips and somersaults all the live long day, texting my Man utd friends saying ” What penalty?” . But the truth is, deep inside i’d be thinking, Justice ! Justice for all the wrong decisions that went our way. Which as a fan, is an unhealthy way of thinking but we’re not to blame.
Consistently inconsistent
The reason fans nowadays react the way they do to footballing decisions is because of how consistently inconsistent it’s become. It’s a disgrace that we’re meant to accept the fact that referees can each have their own style of refereeing . Referees look at different situations and decisions in different ways. Some allow contact and some book it. Some are more lenient to players if they’ve had a good track record in the game giving them second or third chances and some book players based on their track record in past games or their reputation. Some wag their finger on the first challenge before pulling out a yellow card on the next and some wag a yellow card on the first challenge before showing a Red. What’s going it ? This isn’t football, this isn’t what it should be based on. A game should be won and lost depending on how well a team does or doesn’t play on the pitch. Not what the referee saw and didn’t see, called and didn’t call. It should be based on the effort the team and coaching staff who worked hard to prepare for the game. The footballing battle on the field between the players, tactical battles on the sidelines between managers and the witty battles on the stands between the fans. That’s football, that’s the beauty of it. That’s what it should be all about.
The Sad Corrupt Monopoly of football
Notice how i said ” Monopoly of football” not sport. Other sports have impressively evolved to satisfy their empire and i’ll get to the details of that in a bit. Just in case anyone doesn’t know the exact meaning of Monopoly, let’s look at a detailed description of what a monopoly is.
“Monopoly” is an economic term that refers to a situation where only a single company is providing an irreplaceable good or service. Because the firm in question is the only place where the good or service can be found, they have the ability to charge whatever they want, to the detriment of market competition that is the foundation of a healthy economy. Such a company is said to be monopolizing a portion of the market.”
Sound familiar ?
Year after year we’re reminded about how corrupt this sport really is. It’s become all about two things to the governors of the sport. Their image and their money. Now i’ll admit, in business those two points are one of the most important aspects you should look to. But football is more than just a business, it’s a sport, it’s a life style, it’s a passion. In a business you work on either competing with other companies or if you’re lucky enough to monopolize the market, you work on competing with yourself to improve everyday, so as to satisfy your customers.
The governing body of football didn’t invent the sport, yet it’s reaping off the benefits of a monopolized Market, more so every year. Instead of competing with themselves every year they’re just living in ‘ LALA Land ‘ looking down on us fans and our clubs,ready to criticize us back when we make a comment, looking at their watches waiting for the alarm on to ring so they can collect their share of money. We love our clubs and the sport way too much to just walk away, they know it and they’re loving it.
The FIFA world cup picks for 2018 and 2022 only proves my point more. I watched the announcements with no personal opinion in who i’d wanted. Obviously i would have loved England but only cos i’m a Liverpool fan and i knew the club would benefit from it. I knew a world cup in 2018 meant J. W. Henry and his team will have to speed things up when it came to Liverpool’s stadium plans. They’d at least have a deadline and so would we.
They picked Russia and Qatar. Which i found pretty funny, not because of who they picked. I’m sure both countries will pull off outstanding world cup events. I found it funny that the Owners of football said no to the inventors of football, not even if pigs flew is what i took out of their final votes. If that’s not irony i don’t know what is. I was most surprised by the remarks made by Sepp blatter:
“To be honest, I was surprised by all the English complaining after the defeat. England, of all people, the motherland of fair play ideas, Now some of them are showing themselves to be bad losers,” he said. “You can’t come afterwards and say so and so promised to vote for England. The results are known. The outcome came out clearly.”
Not even a sense of sympathy from Fifa’s chief ,all i read was ” Monopoly, my monopoly, our monopoly, our law” . Yet few months later no one is talking about the members of the voting committee that were illegally selling their votes. How many world cups did that happen in? how are we, the general public not certain it didn’t happen this year with the other voters this year?
Sport takes one step forward, FIFA’s football take two back.
The reason why refereeing is so consistently inconsistent is because of how far behind the sport is. Technology is something they seem to be against. I remember reading comments by Sepp blatter stating how video replays would slow down and delay the game. Which is just total nonsense . Think of the penalty at OT on sunday’s game. How many seconds did the referee waste when the liverpool players pleaded their case? The incident happened on around the 30th second and i recall the penalty being taken on the 2nd minute . A minute and a half and that’s with liverpool players who aren’t the type to go crazy on a referee for ages. Is Sepp Blatter trying to tell us that watching players surround a referee for for minutes is better for the game of football than having the referee run along to the sidelines with his assistants and watch the reply of the decision?
Two other sports i follow are Basketball and tennis, both of which make a yearly effort to improve. In tennis they introduced instant reply in 2006.It started off with a rule allowing players to have two challenges per set. If the challenge was ruled in the player’s favor, the player was not charged for the challenge. According to Wimbledon.org, in 2008, the rule was changed to allow for more. If a player has three challenges that were not correct, he is not permitted another challenge in that set. A player is, however, entitled to an additional challenge if the set goes into a tiebreaker. In the NBA ( National basketball association, American basketball ) referees are able to in the last few minutes of games head over to the replay screen and make sure a call they made was right, if they’re not sure that is. An interesting fact about basketball is, the basketball court ( field) is just about twice the size of a penalty box, so more than half the size of a football pitch, has 12 less players on it than in football, yet has the same amount of referees officiating the game.
Now you may ask yourself, why do those sports change and adapt and not football. First off, we’re run by the wrong people, secondly those sports feel the pressure to succeed. Tennis has to improve to satisfy the demands and criticism of the Players since it’s a one on one sport and the players opinions matter. The NBA has to improve because of the competition in sports it has with the other american sports, NFL(National football League,American football) NHL(National Hockey League,American ice hockey ) and MLS (Major league baseball, American baseball).More importantly because they want to improve. Something FIFA doesn’t seem too keen on yet.
The recent FA charge of liverpool’s Ryan Babel is another example. They’re not willing to understand technology. In my opinion, their was nothing malicious about his ” retweeting” of the picture. Let’s think of it in a real life situation since the FA still seem to be riding their carriages and living in the past. Imagine the player was walking down the street and a fan gave him the edited picture of Howard webb wearing the Man utd shirt. The player then turns around, raises it up and shows it to anyone whose around to see it and laughs. Does that deserve a fine? That’s the problem with them, they don’t understand the present. They’re still living in the past.
Going back to the game play part of it, in the past footballers would get hit and stand up.Footballers in general wouldn’t go down easy or feel the contact and fall to ground. True, players are talented and not all players play that game, but the game has changed. Watch any Youth game or reserve game and you can at times get a glimpse of the game that used to be. I’ve sometimes just sat in owe at how i can go a whole game without watching a player roll around for 20 minutes as if he’d had his leg shot off, to bounce back up a second later. Do you blame the money they’re getting ? i don’t think so, they still have the same love for the game, money may affect where they play but not how they play. You only have one thing to blame, the people in charge. Howard webb has shown he’s inconsistent and the proof is their for anyone to see. Look at the world cup final for example, so many wrongs that stuck on fans all over the world’s minds. Yet despite his inconsistencies the FA still put him in the top games, the games were the smallest errors are magnified. They’re to blame. If Howard Webb retires tomorrow, things won’t change right? we’re just going to get another referee to pick at.
Until the governors of football realise that, we the fans just have to be prepared for disappointment. Sunday was an FA cup loss to us but last year it was a World cup spot to a nation, to Ireland. Who knows which Irish kid may have been driven by watching his nation play in the world cup, driven to becoming something in his life, following his dream. If not in football then in anything else. Who knows how the world cup may have slightly helped Ireland and it’s financial crises? Maybe i’m going way over the line between reality but my point is, they’re messing with more than just a team in a team bus driving to a pitch with a few thousand fans that will be disappointed. It’s 2011 and tens of millions around the world are affected by the ” Human errors” Sepp blatter said was a part of the game.
Football under FIFA needs to change and until that happens, every single football fan around the world, be them Man utd fans or Everton fans, Africans or south Americans, they all have the right to show their disgust and anger at a refereeing decision that could have made the difference between winning and losing…
Until then we as Liverpool fans have the right to be angry and disappointed at wrong refereeing decisions like we were on Sunday. If that makes us ” bitter” then toss a bag of salt and vinegar over us. Bitter we will be !
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Well written and straight to the point! like you say its corruption and whether webb is corrupt or not he doesnt help his case with decisions like that. Red nose always gets his way and so many times when webb is ref at manure games we see decisions like this and im with ryan on this one,stevie and ryan should speak up and if they get a longer ban so be it at least webb wont be coming near any of our games again! Count berbatov dived for sure and ITV rewarded it with bubbly,of course they dont want to take the chance of upsetting red nose and not getting after match interviews. Its a sad state of affairs but i for one wont be watching any games we play against manure or if webb MBE (MANCHESTERS BEST EMPLOYEE)is the ref, I refuse to put myself through the farce it always is when either of the two are involved and I suggest fans do the same, by watching or going to these events only encourages and give a green light them to continue in their blatant disregard for football,sportmanship and fair play.
Ferguson would be apoplectic if his club had been on the end of Webbs decision . He would have seen to it that Webb never got another United game.The FA would have quialed before him and TV would have been falling over themselves to pillory Webb on his behalf. I dislike Slur Alex Immensely not because he manges our most loathed rivals but because he he a phoney No amount of silverware will put him up with the ‘Football Men . The Shankly’s,The Busby’s ,The Steins .Perhaps that is what makes him such an embittered man
I am not suggesting that howard webb did do this but just imagine if webb had a member of his family or a friend to place a large bet on a penalty and a sending off in the first half or first half hour how much money could he have made on a bet like that .how many footballers have been found out about betting on games or throwing games. I say this because what ever pro english league you see refs make very strange decisions that can either cost a game or loose a game or get a manager the sack. I would like to think this is not happening but if we can have asian money men have floodlights cut during games we can have anything happen after all there only human as were told after there mistakes
You want to end the monopoly? Get every fan around the world to boycott their team’s matches for a few weeks. I guarantee that Blatter would be out so fast, his shadow wouldn’t even realise it should have moved yet.
We can complain about monopolies in football as much as we like but every single one of us contributes to it on an almost daily basis.
On refereeing decisions, do we make the same big fuss when a dodgy decision goes in our favour? Of course not. We all assure each other that it was a perfectly fine decision (a slight grin and a wink accompanying it). No one can complain unless you’re showing equal outrage at bad decisions that go in our favor, which is something that I see from very few people.
If other team’s supporters believe that Webb is corrupt, simply stop going to any game that he’s put in charge of. Where’s the email campaign that fans are so quick to engage in over other issues? How about the classic $ bag that can be thrown down in their thousands onto the pitch just as the game kicks off?
You don’t see anything like that. Maybe a few boos when he comes out on the pitch while everyone continues to feed money into the club, and by extension into the FA and FIFA.
Don’t like it, do something about it. Otherwise it’s just more pointless ranting over a subject that’s been talked to death.
Brilliant article. Found it very true to the very end.
Why not compile the wrongdoings that Webb of Lies has done to Liverpool. If someone has the ability to put a video montage of the bad calls, I believe that should be evidence enough. To whoever that might be gracious enough in doing this task, maybe look at the time added to manure games when they’re desperate. I remember a 6 or 7 minute add on that changed the game. It doesn’t have to be Liverpool. Any team that had the displeasure of playing in shitland with the shiny shithead in charge would add to the cause. There is definitely something up between the treatment shown to manure and the rest of the league. It’s almost like F1 and Ferrari. They get away with everything. Everbody knows it but the money that transpires is strong enough to expel any doubts and questions. It almost like a mob. Actually it is a mob. Right down to the farce of the Scrooney transfer saga. I believe that he was going nowhere and they concocted this story out that in the end had Scrooney claiming how big a club the shits were and what an honour it was to play for the “greatest’ manager in football. I for one didn’t see any bids to bring scrooney anywhere. So where was he going. The press was definitely part of this eleaborate plan to make the shitheads seem more than just legends in their own minds. So that it might make transfer targets think they are going to some big fuck club. They aren’t even a football club as far as I’m concerned. They even dropped FC from their name. Conspiracy maybe. But who’d ever thought that the FA could get jiggy with it with a club. But we’ve seen it. What I don’t understand is why does Babel get charged for bringing the game into disrepute with an after game/ personal action and Webb gets away scot free for really bringing the game into chaos with his imbecile actions during the game. They should not be untouchable? They should be held responsible for their lack of performance as much as anyone else. A loss of 3 points for some teams through cheating could be the difference between 25m champions league spot or escaping relegation or getting into Europa. Which to a shit team like manure which is already covering it’s debts might mean nothing but to teams and fans of teams like Blackpool, Wigan, Wolves could mean that the dream continues. I seriously hope Arsenal or even Man City win the league so that I could hear the excuses from FUCKERSON on how bloody unfair the world has been to his team. How they were cheated of the title. They’re on the down and are lucky to be in the position they are in. Even manure fans know and realise that. They are in the possession of PAL (playing with arse luck) and have been winning with it. They are in the same deep mire as us. But we have had a sudden change of luck. We have our debts cleared (i hope) and we have King Kenny back at the helm. They on the other hand have the same shit. I know it might be like Kenny says, a real romantic fairytale, but I hope we get to 4th or higher with Arsenal, Chelsea and Man City just to watch the mob boss spit fury and squirm at the injustice of it all. And Webb. Please wear a bloody wig and stop pretending to be Pierluigi Collina you deluded cheating fool.
Its funny most modern sports have video replay help available for the officials when they are not sure, I ask why the hell is it taking so long for football to use this technology? Refs are making bad discussions and linesmen yes they are only human and I except this, but teams could be relegated just for the lose of one point because the mistake was not seen by a ref e.g bad call on a penalty, ball over the line offside ect. Seems to me someone is afraid to have the help of replays ect a 3rd ref works in rugby why cant it work in football? When was the last time a ref gave a penalty for holding a players shirt in the box? If it is classed as a foul then bloody hell there would be loads of penalty’s given.
Great article. No wonder our FA chairman Mr. Nurdin (I am an Indonesian) who already a convicted criminal and also known can arrange a “certain” match result, can successfully maintain his power all this time using FIFA statutes.
If you guys on twitter, a while ago we tried a #NurdinTurun (means Nurdin resign) campaign, he replied it with a “support banners” all over the city and a bunch of “paid protesters”. Sick..
True! I find it odd that FIFA wouldn’t want touch-line technology and instant replays to help the referees determine what really happened. We are behind, ironically, as football is one of the – if not the – most followed sport in the world.
Football needs instant replays simple as that and until it happens referees will continue making mistakes. How many times are you watching a match see something happen think a player was tripped up then see replay and see they dived? I don’t watch much football but its happened a few times to me. How can anyone expet referees to see everything properly the first time? Ok sometimes mistakes by refs do sem so ovious everyone but the ref sees it right like the 2nd England goal vs Germany in world cup. But the penalty if you watch it back you see the liverpool player move his left leg towards man u player as if tryimg to trip him but the contact was almost nothing. So to watch it once and have to make a decision you can see why Webb thought it should be penalty.
So yea allow video replays then blame refs if they still get it wrog. Also in Webbs defence he is in favor of having technology in football surely a ref who deliberatly favored certain teams would be against it. Also anyone who saw him ref the world cup final has to admit he did well there ok you may argue De Jong should of got straight red Webb has since admitted that. But overall how many refs could of coped as well as Webb. I can think of one who I don’t think would have coped as well tho have never seen him in charge of a tough game so maybe I’m wrong. The game itself was probably more than enough presure without the players playing up how they did mainly the Dutch. How many times was Webb surrounded by players mouthing off at him over a decision? I lost count. Yet however hard it was there was no fights or players being subbed through injury.