A month ago, the Premiership saw nothing but clean, precise sliding tackes that stole the ball seemingly unbeknownst from its erstwhile owner. Today it seems that the most heinous of all tacking crimes – the two-footed tackle – is all the modern player is capable of. Or so the media would have you think.
In reality the recent rash of these tackles and their consequent red cards are in fact a manifestation of one of the simplest principles around; monkey see, monkey do.
It can be seen outside of football how a well-publicised act quickly leads to mimicry; the recent spate of gun murders in London was a good example. If you saturate the media with an event it seeps into the public consciousness as a valid means of expression and whether right or wrong legitimises its repetition.
Take Peter Crouch; having spent the majority of the season on the bench and being given his chance in a poorly performing team his frustration built up until he felt the need to express it to the people watching – to show everyone what he was feeling inside. In the split second it took for him to decide to express this frustration the first means of which to do so (an act that is dangerous, frowned upon and passionate) was there in the media after Robbie Keane, Didier Zokora and countless other players had shown the way. Do a two-footed tackle and those watching can be in no doubt as to how unhappy you are (without them doubting your passion or commitment to the team cause).
Ironically, the Keane and Zokora tackles were nothing like Crouch’s. The former was a true ‘forwards challenge’ which barely touched the player and it was debatable whether it was even with two feet while the latter was by a player who has liberally used a two-footed slide since coming to the Premiership when he knows he will win the ball and has yet to come close to hurting an opposing player.
The instant red cards are an interesting one. One assumes that the clubs were told of this new punishment prior to the start of the season and it was the first incident (Keane) and
the commotion over the punishment (rather than the tackle) which led to the cycle of repetition which we are now near the end of.
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