Stone scores, Silva ducks
Twice yesterday I was struck by how we have allowed technology and legal small-print to stand against common sense and sportsmanship.
Instance one
Bernardo Silva is sent into an offside position to put off the goalkeeper at a corner. He succeeds and Manchester City get a last minute winner against Wolves , because Silva ducked.
Instance two
Max Verstaffen got his elbows out and drove Lando Norris off the Circuit of the Americas. Norris got past despite being out of bounds but picked up a 5 second penalty losing a podium position by a second when he crossed the line 4 seconds up.
In both cases, arguments will continue, but they won’t be about sporting achievement, they will be about the technicalities of VAR and the MotorSport equivalent.
The technocracy of sport
Matches and Races are too often determined not on the pitch or course but in committee rooms and studios.
Verstaffen and Norris at the first corner, (no infringement this time)
We are left wondering how incidents like the one above are not investigated and the one that lost Norris the race was.
This really isn’t what sport is about. Technocracy and legal arguments apart, sport is about Norris and Verstaffen, Wolves and City. It was a cracking Sunday for the armchair fan but I wonder whether the real beneficiary of video evidence isn’t the business of sport.
Technology and common sense don’t always go hand in hand in my opinion, Wolves should have drawn and Norris should have taken third place.
I base this on sportsmanship rather than legal niceties . But what do you think?
I got the impression yesterday that Man City have copied this corner kick strategy from rivals Arsenal.
You may or may not have seen Gabriel’s recent goal against Man City, and how Arsenal take the corners this season compares with last season. They now send players rushing inside the 6 yard box making it harder for the goalie to go out and grab crosses from corners, giving Gabriel an easy close header.
My question is, is this legal? Is their not a rule stopping the players from blocking the goalie’s path and obstructing in such a scenario? I blame the combination of on-field referees and VAR officials who allow such goals to stand in the modern game.
Yet part of me prefers the olden days when goalies were “fair game”, think McParland versus Wood in the 1957 FA Cup Final or Lofthouse versus Gregg the following year, or Jack Charlton appearing to stand on goalies’ toes at several corner kicks in the late 1960s.
I agree with the football analysis above, coaching arbitrage from both Arsenal and Manchester until referees clamp down on such practices.
I remember being told in “professional” (ie midweek against other lawyers and accountants) football in the 1970s to get in the way of the goalkeepers at crosses and corner kicks and get out of the way of headers by taller team mates.
We didn’t have linesmen in such games, so the poor referee (ball watching) had to have eyes in the back of his head.
At least one of the linesman in the Wolves game appeared to me to have got it right, only to be overruled by his referee and VAR watcher.
The problem with modern ‘safe’ COTA and other such tracks is their high(ish) grip and large run-off areas. Try that at Monaco and you’d be inside a hotel lobby.
Or on a track where you have a band of grass and then a sand trap on the outside exit of a corner.
When you use rules to punish a driver rather than the track itself, you end up with this type of abuse.
But at least grass or sand should effectively penalise drivers who go off?
It’s been suggested elsewhere one possible answer is there should be a penalty in the form of time lost if a driver leaves the track.
Not time lost as in added on to the race time, but the runoff area should be constructed so that off track will definitely lose time because of the manoeuvre.
Totally agree. If Max or his boss had the slightest decency (’twill never happen, neither knows the meaning of the word!) they would admit to cheating. Forced Lando off track then run to the headmastef, crying!!!
Verstappen has previous.
https://spgs.org/ipaulina/max-verstappens-controversial-championship-win/
But would we protest as much if the other driver involved had not been British?
even if ‘twer’ Stroll