If Young's a cheat what does that make the guy who fouled him?

Outside Old Trafford on Sunday the latest edition of Red Issue fanzine was on sale. Ashley Young was its cover star. ‘Armistice Day: Fallen Remembered’ read the mocking headline. Beneath was a photograph of Young, tumbling, as he has with embarrassing frequency of late. 

In the background, speech bubbles emerged from anonymous faces in the crowd. ‘You’d think he’d been shot ... I wish he had ... He’s gone over the top again ... Lest we forget - what a t*** he is ...’ 

Fragging, the American military would call it. Ambushed by your own side. Even Manchester United’s fans have turned on Young now. He has always gone over too easily but unfortunately these days that is all he seems to do with any success.

Diving into a storm: Ashley Young wins a penalty against Real Sociedad

Mocked: The November issue of the Manchester United fanzine makes fun of Young's diving

Young’s loss of form has seen him relegated from the starting line-up for United and England, with speculation that he will be one of a raft of players dispensed with by David Moyes at the end of the season. Stan Collymore claimed Young could end up in the Championship, on current form.

Usually, though, even suspect characters can rely on the home crowd. Cristiano Ronaldo was never known for his titanic battles to stay upright at Manchester United, so too Nani and even Wayne Rooney. It never stopped the fans singing their names.

Gareth Bale went to ground often as well, but played beautifully, and it was decided his positive contributions outweighed his misdemeanours. He ended last season the Footballer of the Year.
Red Issue is to be commended for its outspoken stance, considering the excuses that have often been made for, say, Luis Suarez at Liverpool, but if Young was playing better, it is fair to assume his antics might be considered more palatable. 

At least they wouldn’t stand out. He isn’t, so they do. Yet, the backlash for his penalty won against Real Sociedad last week has been exceptional. It was still rumbling on this weekend, with former Crystal Palace manager Ian Holloway branding him a cheat, the most damning word in sport. 

But one puzzle remains. While Young may have fallen under minimal contact, there is no doubt that Sociedad midfielder Markel Bergara tugged at his arm. It wasn’t much but it wasn’t intended to be.

Hitting the deck: Gareth Bale was booked for diving - but it did not stop fans signing his name

Minimal contact: Wayne Rooney has also been know to go to ground with minimal contact

Bergara, like Young, was sneaky. He wanted to do just enough to unfairly interfere with his opponent’s attacking run, but not enough to draw the referee’s attention and give away a foul. So, if Young is a cheat, why isn’t Bergara, too? 

It is very strange, this double standard. The onus is on the forward to abide by a strict moral code, yet a defender can seek any advantage in the name of professionalism. 

Thierry Henry should have confessed to the referee that he handled the ball in the build-up to the goal that  eliminated the Republic of Ireland from the 2010 World Cup.

Coming clean: Thierry Henry never owned up to the hand ball that lead to France knocking Ireland out of the World Cup qualifyers in 2009

Yet when has any defender ever admitted to an unseen foul in the penalty area?
Honesty in football is a one-way street. It has allowed Bergara to mount the highest of horses, unquestioned. For he is just as much a cheat as Young. 

Indeed, one of the reasons he was so upset at Wednesday’s incident is that it led to referee Nicola Rizzoli issuing him a yellow card, his third in the Champions League group stage.

Late drama: Ramires goes down in the penalty area to win a last minute penalty for Chelsea

Both cheats? If Young is classed as a cheat then should Markel Bergara also be labeled the same?

Send Ba to save poor Dortmund

If Chelsea are looking to sell Demba Ba in the January transfer window, Borussia Dortmund should be straight in - just to give the man who puts the names on the shirts a rest. 

The team for Wednesday’s match against Arsenal included Roman Weidenfeller,  Robert Lewandowski, Henrikh Mkhitaryan, Jakub Blaszczykowski, Kevin Grosskreutz and Sokratis Papastathopoulos. 
On the substitutes’ bench was Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang. It doesn’t exactly help with copy deadlines, either. 

He misses the next game, away at Shakhtar Donetsk. There have only been four group matches so far and Bergara’s record makes him one of the dirtiest players in the competition. 

He was booked against Shakhtar at home and in both matches with  Manchester United. There are only five players in the tournament that have picked up the equivalent number of cautions, and Bergara’s nine fouls to date places him joint fifth in Europe’s table of miscreants. 

Yet he gets to preach about Young as if spotless. Michael Owen has an interesting take on diving. He recalls that having ridden a foul when playing for England - he was impeded but stayed on his feet - he was furious that referee Pierluigi Collina waved played on and did not give a penalty. 

Collina later explained to him that had he fallen it would have been awarded. Collina felt he could not give a penalty if a player continued his run; Owen says he never made that mistake again. Fouled, he went over.

Looking at Chelsea’s game against West Bromwich Albion on Saturday, one might say similar logic was at work. It certainly wasn’t a penalty and, nobody can say for certain it was a dive, but there was contact - it is a contact sport, after all - after which Ramires made no attempt to stay on his feet. It appeared more lousy   decision than blatant cheating but, if Collina’s views are shared by other  referees, the lines have been blurred.

So we know what Young is up to, but we also know why he is up to it. The fact remains, however, that in Spain he wouldn’t have been up to anything at all were it not for Bergara’s intervention. Young may be a cheat, but so was his opponent. And looking at the number of times Bergara has been caught, he’s not a very smart one, either. Where’s his cover story?

 

Keep politicians out of football

The Football Association has been forced on to the defensive again, after hosting an event for MPs and peers to mark its 150th birthday. 

A top table Q&A session involving Roy Hodgson, Sir Trevor Brooking, Gareth Southgate and Arsenal Ladies and England defender Alex Scott is said to have favoured the men too heavily, and security staff did not do enough to prevent guests discarding empty glasses on the table displaying the Women’s Super League trophy.
Labour MP Barbara Keeley and Baroness Grey-Thompson are to write to FA chairman Greg Dyke in protest. Why do the FA do it?

On the defensive: FA chairman Greg Dyke has had to defend the Q&A evening

Not undermine the women’s game. Take FA subsidies away and there wouldn’t be a profile for women’s football in this country at all. 

No, the real question is, why do the FA feel they have to treat and gladhand our bankrupt political class? Politicians do nothing for football in England.

 They do not offer the local support for stadium construction and infrastructure that exists in Germany and France; they creep and crawl around the UEFA officials who seek to chip away at the strength of the Premier League; their interventions in global affairs such as the 2018 World Cup bid are invariably disastrous. 

Every few years an All-Party Parliamentary Committee meets for a bit of unsolicited advice and grandstanding, seeks the counsel of the usual dullards and axe-grinders and makes a big self-aggrandising pronouncement that goes nowhere.

 And that’s it.
British politicians use football for a bit of cheap publicity and the odd clutch of free tickets and this latest PR disaster is completely the FA’s fault — for even walking through the door to meet those people. 

Not least because anyone who cannot understand why the manager of England takes more questions than the Arsenal Ladies right-back is so out of touch as to deserve exclusion from office anyway.