da gbg bet： Arsene Wenger and Joe Jordan have both received a one-match ban from European Football for incidents in the respective games of Barcelona v Arsenal, and Milan v Tottenham. The idea that the governing bodies of football dislike English teams will only be strengthened by these bans.
da brdice： Gennaro Gattuso acted like a spoilt child all evening in Milan’s first leg encounter with Tottenham. At one point he punched the turf in anger and on numerous occasions he advanced on Peter Crouch, waving his finger and puffing out his chest. He was unjustified in his assault on Joe Jordan in which he grabbed him by the throat and then head-butted him. But to ban a coach who did nothing just shows favouritism towards the Italian side.
What will happen next, any player from an English team who gets fouled will be banned if they show frustration, or recieve a yellow card for showing pain?
Gattuso’s agent claimed that Jordan had called him a ‘f****** Italian b******’. It is no doubt because of these cliams of racism that Jordan has been banned. But Jordan denies making these racist remarks. Jordan has admitted to telling Gattuso to ‘f*** off’ when the Italian advanced at him, but he denies accusations of racism.
If Gattuso is stooping to lying in order to get himself out of trouble, it just shows how desperate he is. Accusations of racism will make Gattuso’s punishment lighter as UEFA clearly don’t want to get on the wrong side of a race row.
[ad_pod id=’fox-mpu’ align=’right’]
But calling an Italian footballer an ‘Italian B******’ is surely more offensive than it is genuinely racist. If I called Jordan a fiery Scotsman, I doubt he would accuse me of racism (please note that I would never pick a fight with Joe Jordan, I am not that stupid). But why do UEFA take Gattuso’s word over Joe Jordan’s? If anything he has proved himself to be the more unreasonable of the two.
Furthermore, it has been reported that racism is common in Italian football, Samuel Eto’o said, just last week, that he would look to move clubs soon as he is embarrassed by the racist abuse he receives when he plays in Italy. Where are UEFA then? This is a case of double standards.
Secondly, even if Joe Jordan did tell Gattuso to f*** off, banning him is ridiculous. If swearing is now worthy of a ban, I doubt there will be enough players to compete in the semi-finals of the Champions League. Every player must swear and express their anger at an official at least once every game, but maybe it is only offensive when it said in English.
The other important question is, will Jordan’s absence affect Tottenham’s performance? Harry Redknapp said ‘Of course I will miss him (on the bench). It’s good to have someone else there.’ I think Jordan showed the value of having an experienced head at the San Siro. He had the guts not to back down to Gattuso, but he showed restraint and maturity. With the Tottenham squad being relatively inexperienced, any figure who has played in Europe before is going to help them.
If you think this is another case of UEFA showing double standards when English teams are involved in confrontation you can contact Joe on twitter @joeasutin8.
Maybe Jordan and Gattuso should have a man hug to make up, here’s how it’s done…
[ad_pod id=’unruly’ align=’left’]