The players have gone mad!
Football players seem to have lost respect to the officials. On Sunday, Cristiano Ronaldo raised his finger in Mike Riley's face like a school teacher taunting a 10-year-old kid, demanding Riley shows Chelsea a yellow card.
School is normally closed on Sunday, but Ronaldo felt he had to discipline the referee! While Rio Ferdinand just proved tyrannosaurases are not extinct just yet (see picture).
There might be plenty of reasons for the players' lack of respect. Maybe their inflated wages and huge transfer sums have made players think that everything must go their way.
Whatever the reasons for footballers' awful attitude toward referees, it is unacceptable for players to yell at referees when they don't like their decisions.
Things are getting out of hand on the pitch. And off the pitch, things are no different.
English Talk has not yet forgotten Cristiano Ronaldo's attitude this summer and his lack of respect toward his employers. ET cannot wait for Rumors & Realities January return so that everyone can enjoy reading about the sickening-yet interesting Ronaldo-Madrid transfer saga. (Maybe this time, it will be a Ronaldo-City transfer saga).
While Emmanuel Adebayor was just yesterday nagging, hoping to get a new contract. Ade wanted to "get paid like Henry to play like Henry" and his lack of respect to Arsenal had the Gunners' fans boo him on the first couple of matches of the season. (It's good Wenger knows Ade can't be Henry).
And these stories never end. Players think they can rule the game on and off the pitch. This lack of respect must be addressed and every disrespectful player must get disciplined well and be taught about RESPECT for the good of football...





8 comments Last one added 9 months ago — Leave a Comment
Brad Simkulet 9 months ago
Hmmm...I actually think the Respect Campaign is a bunch of bollocks. Admonishing referees has never bothered me, but then I come from the world of baseball originally and that sport has never needed a campaign for respect because it is inherently built into the game.
A baseball player who is pissed about a call, or a manager, can take it up with the Umpire all they want. If they get carried away they're gone. No messing about. Just gone. Football needs to create the same atmosphere. If you push the ref too far, you're gone. Straight red. But it is then up to the discretion of the ref (ie. how much he is willing to take), and players are allowed to say whatever they want. They know the consequences and they can take them if they please.
Sport is too passionate for players to "hold their temper" and be "civil" all the time, and let's face it: ref's make shitty calls -- constantly. If you're playing to win and a ref blows a call and you don't get to say anything, where is all that anger going to go? Into the next challenge, maybe. Or it could just build up until the teams are throwing fists at each other. It is unreasonable to expect players to keep their mouths shut about ref calls -- particularly when the rules are so subjective. It is different in NFL where the laws are hard and fast and each call can be appealed. But in baseball, where every ump has a different strike zone, or in soccer where the rules are constantly being interpreted differently by different refs (see the offside wording and they way it is applied for an example) and the speed of the game makes appeal almost impossible, the players should be able to complain.
And if a ref subjectively feels that a player has gone to far he can kick him out.
Drop the fines for bad behavior. Drop the extended bans. Just let the refs handle it in the there and then.
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S B 9 months ago
Refs should talk less too......that`s what they made the cards for.
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Zahi Sahli 9 months ago
LOL... yeah i know.. That only happens in EPL !!
We should call for less lectures and more straight forwards cards.!!!!
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Dev Ashish 9 months ago
Yups i agree with referee shud talk less and use the cards more often ... Presently EPL is a classic case of "spare the rod and spoil the child" tragedy ... English refs have themselves to blame :P
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David Wilson 9 months ago
Respect is a two-way street. When refs screw up a game like the Reading-Watford one and nothing happens to them, it makes it that much harder for teams to respect the refs.
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Maire Ofeire 9 months ago
It is a bit of a tough one but players at the top clubs seem to show a lack of respect for referees but I have the solution, I kid you not, CLONE Perluigi Collina nobody messed with that guy!! He'd just do that mad eye-stare thing and players were like no way I'll just shut up.
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Yoosof Farah 9 months ago
well done zahi, you put those footballers back in their place!! i think's it ridiculous the way players treat referees, if i ever did that in my sunday league games, i'd probably get a five match ban!!
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Shyam Parthasarathi 9 months ago
When you see Riley's decisions and that Watford Reading game, it's hard to see where the respect will come from.. these guys need to earn their respect.
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