And if he played for your shower of cunts, you'd have a duvet cover with his face on it.
This is how it has always been.

Actually no. I would be embarrassed and ashamed. But then again you don't really get as much of that big fish in a puddle behaviour at old trafford, and if anyone does hint at it, they leave shortly enough.

*cough* Roy Keane..? *cough*

feigning injury to get the smallest man on the pitch sent off? One who he had just done a two footer on as he lay on the ground?

I doubt you'd call him a hypocrite either.

No, no you're right. He was a paragone of virtue. Certainly not someone who ever went in two-footed to try and break someone's leg and told them "Take that you ****".

that's not the same thing at all and you know it.

Firstly it was one footed, secondly he didn't actually say that, (it was his reported internal monologue) thirdly he had a long history of personal animosity with that player, one who had screamed abuse at him as he lay injured on the ground, and had been taunting him in the media in the lead up to the game. It's not pleasant, nor was it the right thing to do, but it's not inconsistent with what we already knew about the player. Indeed we only know about his motivation because he told us about it, and for that he was punished the second time. Whereas England's steven gerrard won't be punished at all.

It's not entirely edifying, but you know, most people have a tolerance for occasionally violent players, but not violent hypocritical cheats. you're going to have more tolerance for someone who grabs patrick viera by the throat, rather than someone who pretends to have been beaten up by someone who is about the same size as an average woman.

I mean that whole court case that hobbes referred to obliquely up there must be incredibly embarrassing. Letting his scumbag mates take the fall so he could have a clear run at beating the rap? There's someone to be proud of.

This all smacks of the parable of "The Speck and the Plank".

not really. having read all their respective autobiographies, I would compare keane a lot more to Jamie Carragher than steven gerrard. I mean you should read the section about lucas neill for an example of how footballers bear grudges, and how they act (or nearly act) on them.

Then compare the lucas Neill/alf inge haaland episodes with Gerrard going around trying to intimidate a blissfully unaware member of the academy, who committed the heinous crime of being one of the the england youth coaches who decided 10 years previously that Gerrard was too small, and probably too crazy and too immature to go to lilleshall.

Honestly, would you have seen either of the two of them pretending that steven pienaar had hit them on the back of their head? They'd have been ashamed.

Professional footballer in "not meeting up to high moral standards of fan of opposing team with long history of self-delusion" Shocker!

And of course, poor old Saint Stephen of South Africa. Or "Tiny Tim" as I like to think of him.
"Let him who hath not raked his studs down the leg of an opponent cast the first stone."
I notice that while you're making a big deal of Gerrard questionably being late on a player who fell in front of his boot (it looked to me like he tried to pull out of it) you're studiously not mentioning the Everton player who kicked Mascherano in the head after Little Saint Stephen who would never hurt a fly, tried to snap his leg.

Hobbes, you should look at the video again, he studded him in the ribcage with the second of the two feet he used in an entirely unnecessary challenge. Then he hid behind others and let the ref lose control of the game before giving him the same punishment as he gave to an everton player who pushed a liverpool player. (insert here joke about how he likes to avoid punishment for his crimes by hiding behind others)

and I started an entire thread about fellaini and about what a full spectrum maniac he was having seen him kick kuyt in the head (not mascherano). Not many people could keep a performance like that up for 41 minutes and not get even booked. He truly is a hero of the modern WWE style game.

Pienaar's tackle on kuyt wasn't that bad really, he was just a little late, and didn't really hit him that hard. It was Nowhere near the same league as the one on mascherano five minutes later.

All the talk upthread about Piennar's size (and Fellaini's tendency to get booked) seemed to chime with this that I read today;



Football referees 'more likely to penalise taller players', say researchers

Study of more than 100,000 fouls show shorter players get backing of officials


Peter Walker guardian.co.uk, Sunday 7 February 2010 16.50 GMT

As Fabio Capello weighs up the relative merits of Peter Crouch and Jermain Defoe for his World Cup forward line, it is unlikely he will be taking into account the views of social psychologists. Perhaps he should.

Research on the apparent human tendency to associate size with power and aggression has shown that football referees are notably more likely to penalise taller footballers when they tangle with less lofty opponents, potentially bad news for the 6ft 7in Crouch but a boon for fellow striker Defoe, who is a foot shorter.

A study of more than 100,000 fouls in domestic, European and international football showed that the greater the height difference between the players involved then the more chance the referee will adjudicate in favour of the shorter one.

Academics from Rotterdam school of management in the Netherlands tested the hypothesis further by getting panels of football fans to view mock-up images of two players heading towards a ball equidistant between them.

When asked to speculate which of the pair would be more likely to end up on the ground, and for what reason, there was a clear bias towards assuming the smaller player would be the victim and the taller one the aggressor.

"You will always get moments in a game when the situation isn't very clear and the referee has got to make a fast decision. This is where assumptions could influence them," said Steffen Giessner, one of the co-authors. "There are, of course, lots of causes and effects taking place here. There is an effect with height, but we can't say precisely how strong it is."

Giessner has carried out research into height and perceptions of power in business leadership. This study was partly inspired by an observation by his co-author, Niels van Quaquebeke, that as a keen but relatively short basketball player he got the impression he was rarely penalised for fouls.

Without sufficient data for basketball the pair examined statistics from the German domestic league, Champions League and World Cup, and found that where players were between 6cm and 10cm taller than opponents they were blamed for almost 60% of fouls.

"It's very much about visible height difference. The effect is much stronger the greater the differences in height," said van Quaquebeke.

The researchers speculated that some of this effect might be due to taller players predominating in positions such as defence, where fouls might be more common.

But closer analysis of the data found this was not the case – in fact the greatest number of fouls were carried out by relatively small midfielders against other players in the same position.

The findings are likely to underplay the true situation, the authors say, as the fouls considered included a lot of unambiguous offences where height played no factor. Additionally, the data excludes occasions where fouls by shorter players were missed entirely by referees.

There is, of course, another explanation: that taller players really are more aggressive. The only way to sort that out, the authors suggest, would be to film a series of matches from multiple angles and analyse the refereeing decisions.

In the meantime Giessner, as a German national, has no words of advice for Capello. But he does venture a plan for his own country's football coach, Joachim Loew, when it comes to the combative left back, Philipp Lahm, a modest 5ft 7in.

"You wouldn't call Lahm a dirty player, but he's certainly quite aggressive. And even as a defender he never seems to have many fouls given against him," he said.

"If I was Joachim Loew at the World Cup, I'd be advising Lahm to get into the opposition penalty area as often as he can, fall over and see what happens."

That's what I was referring to in the opening post. I'm coming down on the side that he gets booked a lot because he's a crazy violent cunt.

My only regret was that he injured himself stamping on kyrgiakos. The Entire place would have gone completely mental if he'd come back on. It would have been amazing.

thirdly he had a long history of personal animosity with that player, one who had screamed abuse at him as he lay injured on the ground,

Always this nonsense as if Keane was somehow a victim. You never elect to mention that Keane was only lying there injured on the ground because his attempt to maim Haaland had gone so wildly wrong.

Standing over someone and who had patently been trying to assault you and arsed it up with such calamitous results and telling them what you think of them is perfectly acceptable behaviour.

meregreen - if your "cheating" accusation against gerrard is based on his dive in the first half, i assume you'll be delighted when landon donovan jets back to LA because he was the one who got that particular ball rolling. an honourable mention must go to n'gog who is plainly unaffected by the derision piled on him earlier in the season and intends to stay true to his personal principles.



Even when he pretends that the smallest man on the pitch somehow managed to smash him down on the crown of his head rendering him nearly unconscious, when he only collided with his chest? Or when he jumped two footed at a player who was falling on his face at his feet? He's a shitbag, a hypocrite and a coward.

<yawn> as hobbes said, pienaar had been living by the sword a while by the time of the first incident you mention; his unpunished foul on mascherano earned him the enmity of every liverpool player. and the tackle you refer to was not nearly as bad as you're making out - it wasn't two footed and the contact with pienaar might have warranted a yellow but not a red.

the cowardly aspect of keane's attack on haaland was, of course, that haaland wasn't expecting it. given your "hiding behind others" refrain, i'm amused to see you've erased your memories of how keane, in an effort to reduce the punishment imposed by the FA, hid behind eamon dunphy's testimony that he used poetic license when he wrote up the incident for the book. and don't you think what was recorded as his "internal monologue" ("take that you cunt, and don't ever stand over me sneering about fake injuries" iirc) was probably pretty much what he shouted at the writhing alfie before leaving the pitch that day? what else do you think he was saying?

garcia wrote:
meregreen - if your "cheating" accusation against gerrard is based on his dive in the first half...

It's based on watching him play football for the past ten years. I don't recall the Donovan incident, but I'll take your word for it. Let me know when Donovan starts moaning about diving foreigners ruining the English game. Then, I'll acknowledge that he's a special kind of cock.

garcia, it matters not one bit what went before or why Steven Gerrard might have felt personally affronted by Pienaar's previous conduct. Gerrard clutched his face when Pienaar rather gently bumped into him, and did so with a view to getting Pienaar sent off.

I don't recall where you stood with the Rivaldo face-clutching episode in the 2002 World Cup. But if you did take exception to Rivaldo's conduct, then you'll have to agree that Steven Gerrard is a most despicable cheat.

On another note and as a Belgium fan, I have nothing but contempt for him because of his attitude towards the national side.

Good grief, I had no idea Fellaini was Belgian.I thought he was an uncapped Italian.

I really must visit "Football" more. Amongst all this BRC-bitching, there is real information

steady on g-man, i wasn't the one getting on my high horse and throwing out words like despicable and cowardly and shitbag etc. i accept the match as a whole was a cesspit of deceit and brutality but there were a number of villains in play, with pienaar to the fore.

your rivaldo comparison is totally ridiculous. rivaldo wasn't even within ten yards of a turk, whereas pienaar physically collided with gerrard.

Bored of Education wrote:
On another note and as a Belgium fan, I have nothing but contempt for him because of his attitude towards the national side.

Good grief, I had no idea Fellaini was Belgian.I thought he was an uncapped Italian.

I really must visit "Football" more. Amongst all this BRC-bitching, there is real information

He's of Morrocan descent, if that helps.

What is his "attitude towards the Belgian national side then, StephL"? I'm guessing "diffident".

Steph's precis from October:

Fellaini is rubbish for Belgium (but currently, you would struggle to find a player who isn't, even though most of them are playing for big or big-ish clubs).

But what I hate about him is his "I'll pick the games I'm playing" attitude. When we lost 5-0 in Spain (in early September), he was pedestrian for the whole game (I was at the La Coruna match), only for him to pick a booking so he would be suspended the next game and miss the trip to Armenia (far away country, only 3 games before his next club match, etc...). When a local journo raised the question, he told in typical fashion that he was not aware that he was under the threat of suspension... Great professional that he is...

In a way, the defeat in Estonia (a great personnal trip, shame about the 2 hours football event...) could be good and I hope that Advocaat will drop some players like him (although he of course didn't play), but also Van Buyten, Dembele,... Even Vermaelen, who's really great for the Arse, is playing crap for Belgium (and he was made captain...)