Soccer Fan Blog

A few months ago I wrote an article about the bad education in the football grounds, attending both on the bad behavior of some fans and on the permissiveness of the clubs and the silent complicity of the rest of occupants of the graderío. This time I want to speak about some bad customs that have been restored in our soccer (without entering sterile comparisons with other countries) and that are not a responsibility of the followers, but of the institutions, the clubs, the trainers or the proper soccer players.

The recogepelotas abducidos

I do not realize well when this dishonourable practice began to expand but certainly ten years ago he was not meeting so often: when the home team is winning and the chronometer is approaching in the end, the recogepelotas disappear. These lads who some time ago were straining in delivering a new ball while another partner gathers the one that got lost disappear towards some secret storage. Nobody knows very well adónde they go, simply they were but they are already not, as if they had been abducidos. And the players visitors, who are losing, have not left other one that to avoid photographers, fences and microphones for themselves to be in charge of gathering the ball. An authentic shame.
First because a thing is that the soccer players lose time and other one much more seriously is that it is the club the one that comes to dirty stratagems to affect in the normal course of the game. And second, and more important, because for it children are used so, as we all know, most of the recogepelotas are lads of the low categories of the local club or of other teams of the city. This way of unworthy: a few adults use a few minors to do pitfalls, taking advantage of them on having used them like farmhands and giving them a lesson not advisable at all (everything costs to win).

To return the ball on the contrary further possibly

Other one of the ugly customs that they have spread like a virus over the soccer Spain happens almost always that a team throws the ball it was so that one attends to an injured person. I do not want to enter the debate if it is necessary to throw the ball it was or not, but in what it does the team that later it must extract of band to recapture the game. The normal thing, the habitual thing, is to return the ball further possibly, giving him the back to the sports spirit. The modus operandi is usually more or less like that: the team that has the ball sees that there is an injured player and, before the ineffectiveness of the umpire, he decides to stop the game throwing the ball to out of band; another team, as soon as the injured man was restored, does not return the ball to the height where it was when the game stopped, but further possibly, as if the party was in fact of rugby.

Even more ugly detail when the one that returns the ball unwillingly does it after the party was stopping to attend to a partner of his. But it does not finish there the disgrace, since there is still the one who has the face of going to press the throw in, extracting profit of the good will on contrary. Or not so much, because knowing what will come later, every day the ball begins it was with less desire and more for obligation. Is here the curious thing: the players feel forced to throw the ball it was because it is the ethically correct thing and if they do not do it, they are booed in situ and they are criticized at a later stage. Nevertheless, nothing is said about the one that does not behave at a height of the first gesture at the time of returning the ball. Since an honorable gesture turns in atrocious when it is done unwillingly and with the second intentions.

In fact, presently many of the players who have to throw the ball it was already they do it more to the possible fund, trying to resist it more than probable dirty play of the rival. That is to say: why am I going to throw the ball it was for companionship if they are going to return it to me with rivalry? This way, already we are inside a spiral in which they all distrust all. Perhaps the best thing would be that the Federation was legislating on the matter, marking the script to be continued in these cases and being the umpires those who were looking over his fulfillment. But it seems very sad to me that be necessary to come to this point since the ideal thing would be that the sportsmanship was still meaning something for all of us.

All the blows hurt over the impact area

I like very much that there is punished a player who does pitfalls trying to cheat the umpire, since not only it puts in problems the manager of giving justice, but it tries to pervert the spirit of the game and is exempted like sportsman (and it presents itself) on having come to this big lie of ‘the end justifies the means’. There are many ways of doing it: to throw itself in search of this absence or this penalty that it was not, to meet to him on the hand to the ball, to exaggerate the pain …

It is quite easy to see when someone touches the ball with the hand, the difficult thing comes when an umpire must dissolve in a second the gravity of such a gesture, attending to his voluntariedad and his consequences in only a second. To decide if a player has thrown himself or cannot be full complicated, since often not even two friends end up by agreeing after seeing multiple repetitions in different angles and speeds. Happily, for a few years the umpires have an express order to attend especially on this type of stunts and, really, now he is punished more; in fact, now we complain about that some reprimands were undeserved because, although the event in particular was not a penalty, also it can be that the attacker was finishing in the soil without claiming it …

To exaggerate the pain of an infraction is an indecent practice. Shame produces to me these players that nearly more that a trip they end up by turning of bell for the soil as if there were a MotoGP motorbike. First because it commits an outrage against the logic: the more serious is the traumatism, the less the injured person moves, and second, because we all know the moral of the fable ‘Pedro and the wolf’. From this dirty habit there stems a practice that turns out to be especially insulting to me: to feel sorry about an area different from the struck one.

Every day we see more this unsporting praxis that consists in that any tough impact hurts more above. If a type takes a blow in the fibula, one throws the hand to the knee; if they beat him in the belly, it feels sorry about the ribs; and from here on, the va more: any blow over the breast, hurts in the face. It is not important that it is a poke in the breastbone or a scratch in the neck. In the Spanish elite soccer, the face always hurts. What does not stop being ironic, because the one that does that, in front of thousands of eyes and tens cameras, is not another thing than an authentic sassy person.

From this humble tribune I would dare to ask to the Federation and to the Committees, if there were no a few completely corrupt institutions, that they the hand was not trembling at the time of punishing at a later stage this practice. There is very well to take the card from this guy that was used by an unsporting rival (although it is already hurt if it has been expelled and his team had to play with one less), but also it would be necessary to sanction the liar, economically and with parties.

Conclusion

The Spanish picaresque novel has more than five hundred years. In fact one of the works summits of our literature is Lazarillo de Tormes, whose more ancient well-known edition dates of 1554. In this country to be honored is almost always synonymous of dickhead and this maxim works at all the levels. If, for example, the crane takes us the car for having evil parked evil and we have a brother-in-law in the local police, any friend would say to us that we are dumb if we do not pull the plug to escape from a punishment that we deserve. And the fact is that the average Spanish prefers to stay like tricky than like idiot; not in vain, the tricky one is called ready and the honest one is called an idiot.

The world of the soccer is not foreign to it and, consistently, in the football grounds we can see that the pitfalls are to the agenda: players who cheat the umpire or take advantage of the rival, members of the clubs that try to affect in the party and up to some fans who are created more ready than anybody, like when he does not return himself the ball that finishes in the step and, once one puts himself in new game, the first one is thrown for incordiar. And we all justify to ourselves equally: "they are not going to do it, so you do not hope that we do not do it”, or vice versa: "they also do it, so we …”. We should read again ‘The Guide’, realize that his protagonist does not finish anything well and to begin to give the first steps so that this changes, patiently and trusting that, little by little, is imposing the fair play on himself and the tricky ones begin to change or to hide.

Photo | AlejandroAndres