In the last 24 hours I’ve seen some of the worst individual mistakes made by professional defenders that you’ll ever see.
The Sydney derby in the Hyundai A-League featured a cracking atmosphere with over 40,000 people in attendance. It also saw the visitors, Western Sydney Wanderers, pretty much dominate the hosts, Sydney FC, yet lose 3-1.
Why? Three horrendous errors. A flappy keeper, a horribly under-hit back pass and a needless penalty. And it wasn’t dummies who made those mistakes, either. Did the atmosphere get to them? Should it have? After all, it was the Sydney players who were running around like lunatics seemingly blasted away by the crowd.
Check out the highlights here.
Bang! There goes a foot…
Of course, the match will probably be featured in the Aussie media for the alleged cultural and religious issues raised by Ali Abbas after the match because that’s what the media does in Oz. To many over there football is ‘un-Australian’ even though, given they’re a nation of immigrants, it’s probably the most Australian game they’ll ever have, and some journos just love an opportunity to have a crack. I digress.
Okay, the Sydney derby is a game I couldn’t really care less about. It makes no difference to me who wins or loses.
But then we turned to the Chelsea versus Spurs English Premier League match. That one I do give a s*** about.
Sheesh, it’s tough enough playing Chelsea at the Bridge but Spurs chose to defend like that!? Incomprehensible. An under-hit back pass, a soft, but correct, penalty (although the red card that ensued was wrong), then a slip and a bungle in front of goal followed by Kyle Walker heading the ball back from nearly halfway to an almost unmarked attacker. All totally avoidable by professional defenders you would have thought.
Bang! There goes the other foot. The calf. The knee cap. The thigh…
Spurs have been a tough watch this season but that… speechless. I’m not going to post a ‘highlights’ link here. You can find it for yourself. I will post Tim Sherwood’s post-match interview. Respect, even though (and perhaps because) he’s a dead man walking in this job.
Just when you thought you’d seen it all in football you see something new.
I love this game, even though there are times when I hate it so much. That’s why it’s the best thing going. Even when it’s not.