De Jong tackle.

[Kladze]

Andy Townsend has gone way up in my estimation after reading this.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/footba ... -Jong.html?

I've always had respect for Townsend, seems a good balanced pundit.

One of the responses to that article reads :

This article shows the sort of backward thinking that is prevalent in English football and why the national team will never win a tournament until we focus on technique rather than power.

Reckless, dangerous tackles are not part of the game and it's cave dwellers like Townsend & their voice in the media that continue to leave a stain on English football.

- simon, london, 06/10/2010 14:04

Oh the irony!
A Dutch player's tackle reveals what's wrong with English football?

[Slim]

I can tell you now, I haven't been one of his biggest fans in the past but after all this he is my new favourite player.

FUCK THOSE SANCTIMONIOUS CUNTS WHO GET ON THEIR HIGH HORSE TO CONDEMN A LAD WHO DID THE JOB WE DAMN WELL PAID HIM TO DO.

Legal challenge? Yes.
Hard challenge? Yes.
Unfortunate outcome? Yes.

LEAVE IT THE FUCK BE, we didn't moan and complain when we lost Petrov or Bojinov(did he get injured in warm up?) or Balotelli(did we sue and claim the airline shouldn't be able to schedule another flight until Mario returns?)

FFS, it's all getting a bit ridiculous and I have had enough of Talksport and the tabloids slagging the lad off not because of the challenge but because of the injury.

[Niall Quinns Discopants]

The other incident is a bit more off topic. My local club Hibs sacking a manager for not winning in any of there first 6 games. Fair enough he has no budget, took them into Europe last year and had his best player sold under him to balance the books at the transfer window. Yet he was forced out by FAN pressure. Utter morons. Yet I suspect not unique to the East side of Edinburgh.

Sad state of affairs.

I've always kept an eye on Hibernians results eversince one of my favourite Finnish players and childhood hero Mixu Paatelainen played (and later managed) there. I was quite shocked to see John Hughes go. Despite the burden of the name I thought he did brilliant job taking them to Europe last season. And to my knowledge he did sterling job in Falkirk before that. I doubt they will find anyone better.

Yeah, they didn't have best of start to season but they were hardly going to challenge Old Firm with the players they have got.

[CityFanFromRome]

The other incident is a bit more off topic. My local club Hibs sacking a manager for not winning in any of there first 6 games. Fair enough he has no budget, took them into Europe last year and had his best player sold under him to balance the books at the transfer window. Yet he was forced out by FAN pressure. Utter morons. Yet I suspect not unique to the East side of Edinburgh.

Sad state of affairs.

I confirm it's not unique to Edinburgh, Roma are having a bad patch in this first part of the season and fans are calling for Ranieri's head while three months ago he was an hero for having led the club from the relegation zone to contending the title to Inter till the very last minute of the last game of the season, without any real money to spend due to the debt the owners have with the bank (which is now the real owner of the club). Fickle doesn't even begin to describe them.

[ja0005]

The F.A's response to this will be interesting. Under FIFA rules he has no case to answer. The ref saw it and deemed it a fair tackle and their own assistant manager admitted watching it several times and also said it was a fair tackle. There was no reaction by the Newcastle players or fans on the day. All the hysteria came a day or two after the event from the execrable Talksport.

We know that the F.A is a spineless organisation and needs some positive press from the media after the Wembley and South Africa cock-ups (and previous messes). My worry is that they see this as an opportunity to cosy up to popular opinion. City are pretty unpopular at the minute anyway, only made worse by what happened on Sunday and what better way to appear heroes and the saviours of the English game.

I can't think why there has been no word from the F.A on Newcastle's letter unless they are looking at ways round the rules. If they have any balls they should dismiss Newcastle's letter and use the words "no case to answer" in their statement, making it clear that NDJ did not commit an offence. But this would set the media on themselves so.....My guess would be a 5 match ban - takes us past the rags game.

[Beefymcfc]

I thought the rules were that any incident that the referee didn't see had to be dealt with within 2 days of the event, ie. Tuesday? Saying that, the ref did see it so there shouldn't be a case to answer to, unless, by a club writing a letter the rules are then changed again; or shouldn't any appeals to the commitee be made in that 2 day period?

I'm confused as I'm sure there is nothing can be done to Nige now, but reports/posts keep coming up inferring that there could????

[Ted Hughes]

I don't think City will go down without a fight on this one, simply because it's clearly a media witch hunt & not a fair reflection of the challenge. I recon most of the people commenting haven't actually seen the incident at normal speed & are viewing it from the one angle, which is designed to make it look like he barely got the ball & makes it impossible to judge his intent. If the FA ban him for this, I expect City to produce about 200 videos of similar unpunished challenges including several by Newcastle players on the day.

As I've posted before; I sit in that area of the ground & I've seen many many worse challenges without even a hint of trouble or injury. The lad was unlucky, that's all.

Whatever happens, DeJong will be victimised by refs now as most of them will only have watched the one replay angle.

[bluej]

Now FIFA have put their oar in... NOTE - they don't reference the De Jong challenge but it doesn't take much to put 2 and 2 together.

Fifa's top medical official has said that football at the highest level is being disfigured by "criminality" and "brutality" on the pitch.

Dr Michel d'Hooghe told BBC Sport he is concerned by the number of serious injuries caused by dangerous tackles.

"Some players come on the field... simply to provoke injuries in other persons - to break a career," he said.

The Belgian added: "I have two eyes, where I can see what happens - how some acts are really criminal."

D'Hooghe is the chairman of Fifa's medical committee and one of the longest-serving members of the executive committee of football's world governing body.

He was speaking out following a recent series of serious injuries sustained by Premier League players after reckless challenges - but he made it clear he was not referring to any player specifically.

Theo van Seggelen, the general secretary of global players' union FIFPro, has defended his members.

"I don't believe there is a player in the world - and we have 50,000 members - who would deliberately try to injure someone else," said Van Seggelen. "That would not be acceptable."

D'Hooghe also said that if referees fail to spot bad tackles, then football authorities must be able to punish players retrospectively.

Newcastle United have expressed frustration that the Football Association, under current Fifa rules, cannot discipline Manchester City's Nigel de Jong, because match referee Martin Atkinson did not award a free-kick for his recent tackle on Hatem Ben Arfa. The challenge resulted in the Newcastle United player sustaining a broken leg.

D'Hooghe said if there is clear video evidence, an FA should still act, adding: "It's not because it's not been seen on the field that suddenly nothing happened."

Fifa has proved itself enormously resistant to the use of video technology to aid referees, but D'Hooghe insisted this could be less controversial than goal-line aids.

He says he intends to raise the issue at Fifa's next executive committee meeting in three weeks.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/9071151.stm

[Niall Quinns Discopants]

Now FIFA have put their oar in... NOTE - they don't reference the De Jong challenge but it doesn't take much to put 2 and 2 together.

Fifa's top medical official has said that football at the highest level is being disfigured by "criminality" and "brutality" on the pitch.

Dr Michel d'Hooghe told BBC Sport he is concerned by the number of serious injuries caused by dangerous tackles.

"Some players come on the field... simply to provoke injuries in other persons - to break a career," he said.

The Belgian added: "I have two eyes, where I can see what happens - how some acts are really criminal."

D'Hooghe is the chairman of Fifa's medical committee and one of the longest-serving members of the executive committee of football's world governing body.

He was speaking out following a recent series of serious injuries sustained by Premier League players after reckless challenges - but he made it clear he was not referring to any player specifically.

Theo van Seggelen, the general secretary of global players' union FIFPro, has defended his members.

"I don't believe there is a player in the world - and we have 50,000 members - who would deliberately try to injure someone else," said Van Seggelen. "That would not be acceptable."

D'Hooghe also said that if referees fail to spot bad tackles, then football authorities must be able to punish players retrospectively.

Newcastle United have expressed frustration that the Football Association, under current Fifa rules, cannot discipline Manchester City's Nigel de Jong, because match referee Martin Atkinson did not award a free-kick for his recent tackle on Hatem Ben Arfa. The challenge resulted in the Newcastle United player sustaining a broken leg.

D'Hooghe said if there is clear video evidence, an FA should still act, adding: "It's not because it's not been seen on the field that suddenly nothing happened."

Fifa has proved itself enormously resistant to the use of video technology to aid referees, but D'Hooghe insisted this could be less controversial than goal-line aids.

He says he intends to raise the issue at Fifa's next executive committee meeting in three weeks.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/9071151.stm

Like I said, the game is governed by people who want to make it a non-contact sport.

Most of the people in FIFA are NOT football people and have no footballing experience. It always made me laugh how they found the only Brazilian with no football experience, Joao Havelange, to run FIFA. Sepp Blatter is the same. People on FIFA governing bodies rarely if ever have any football experience.

[Blue Since 76]

No one likes us, no one likes us, no one likes us, we don't care.

Remember who said what, but ignore it. They'll soon come crawling when they need an interview. We should take a taggart approach to talkshite - either don't give them a quote or tell every player to only speak to them in his own language, which I suspect isn't against premier league rules - translate that lot.

[Manx Blue]

Was listening to talk sport on the way in today. Apparently danny Murphy has has a go at 3 or 4 clubs/ managers in one of the papers, in which he suggests players instructed to be much more "robust"...shall we say.

I don't think we're one of them. Stoke Wolves & Bklackburn were mentioned...in his oppinion, allegedly and all that.

[Niall Quinns Discopants]

Was listening to talk sport on the way in today. Apparently danny Murphy has has a go at 3 or 4 clubs/ managers in one of the papers, in which he suggests players instructed to be much more "robust"...shall we say.

I don't think we're one of them. Stoke Wolves & Bklackburn were mentioned...in his oppinion, allegedly and all that.

I really don't see much problem with that either if you are Stoke or Wolves. You are fighting for EVERY point and trying to stay in this league with inferior squad of players to most. You have got to work harder and tackle harder if you plan to have any chance of survival. I don't think anyone says "go break his leg". They just tell them to tackle so that the attacking midfielder, winger or striker knows the remainder of the game that there's always someone close to him.

I like tough tackling, I like defensive players trying to upset attacking players, I like players who go to challenges with intention to win the ball. I like it when smaller clubs make it harder for better clubs giving it all they got.

[ja0005]

Andy Gray's take on the tackle. Talks sense. For once.


A lot has been made of Nigel de Jong's tackle on Hatem Ben Arfa last weekend. The incident has since attracted extra attention as a result of Bert van Marwijk's decision to drop the Manchester City man from his Dutch squad to play Moldova and Sweden, claiming this time he went too far.

His decision is an interesting one and must be interpreted as him making the point to de Jong that he doesn't condone those sort of tackles, nor does he want him being part of his plans when he's doing things like that. A similar thing happened to me under Jock Stein when I was playing for Scotland; he told me he was leaving out of a particular squad to teach me a lesson. It doesn't matter anymore what it was that I did wrong, it was a long time ago!

But let's get back to the crux of the issue. Newcastle and Ben Arfa are obviously disappointed with what's happened and understandably so: the boy was just beginning to settle in this league and the team have been deprived of one of their best creative forces for an indefinite amount of time.

But I don't think it was a malicious tackle; replays show he didn't catch him with his leading foot, it was his trailing leg that made contact and it was just very unfortunate that the damage that caused was so severe.

De Jong is an extremely committed player and anyone who plays in that sort of role, running around the field making tackles, is always at risk of causing a serious injury but I'll maintain he didn't go out to injure the Frenchman. And that's why I'm not in the camp that believes he should receive retrospective punishment for the challenge.

It's a very unfortunate incident all round and I'm sure the FA and its referees will be keeping a close eye on de Jong's future conduct but for the time being we should just put the whole thing down as just something that happens in football from time to time and leave it at that.



From Betfairs website.

[Slim]

I think it's a given that he will be booed whenever he gets the ball for at least a few games, should make sure that those City fans in the ground give a cheer whenever he's on the ball.

[CityFanFromRome]

I think it's a given that he will be booed whenever he gets the ball for at least a few games, should make sure that those City fans in the ground give a cheer whenever he's on the ball.

I don't think the boos he will get are going to be the main problem for him, but the bookings and possible red cards he will get from the referees who will watch his every tackle with much harsher eyes for quite a long time from now on.

[Wooders]

I think it's a given that he will be booed whenever he gets the ball for at least a few games, should make sure that those City fans in the ground give a cheer whenever he's on the ball.

the thing I like about de jong is that booing him and all this press furore won't affect him one bit - he'll tackle tough against blackpool as well

[dario2739]

Bloody hell... even Andy Gray's on Nige's side now!

A lot has been made of Nigel de Jong's tackle on Hatem Ben Arfa last weekend. The incident has since attracted extra attention as a result of Bert van Marwijk's decision to drop the Manchester City man from his Dutch squad to play Moldova and Sweden, claiming this time he went too far.

His decision is an interesting one and must be interpreted as him making the point to de Jong that he doesn't condone those sort of tackles, nor does he want him being part of his plans when he's doing things like that. A similar thing happened to me under Jock Stein when I was playing for Scotland; he told me he was leaving out of a particular squad to teach me a lesson. It doesn't matter anymore what it was that I did wrong, it was a long time ago!

But let's get back to the crux of the issue. Newcastle and Ben Arfa are obviously disappointed with what's happened and understandably so: the boy was just beginning to settle in this league and the team have been deprived of one of their best creative forces for an indefinite amount of time.

But I don't think it was a malicious tackle; replays show he didn't catch him with his leading foot, it was his trailing leg that made contact and it was just very unfortunate that the damage that caused was so severe.

De Jong is an extremely committed player and anyone who plays in that sort of role, running around the field making tackles, is always at risk of causing a serious injury but I'll maintain he didn't go out to injure the Frenchman. And that's why I'm not in the camp that believes he should receive retrospective punishment for the challenge.

It's a very unfortunate incident all round and I'm sure the FA and its referees will be keeping a close eye on de Jong's future conduct but for the time being we should just put the whole thing down as just something that happens in football from time to time and leave it at that.

[Beefymcfc]

Is that a set-up or what? Just watching on SSN and they've got Graham Taylor (who changed his tune of course) outside CoMS talking about tackling in the game. Seems that now it's all calmed down, they've gone all subliminal to keep the hatred going.

[Ted Hughes]

The problem DeJong has, imo, is that most people haven't actually seen the challenge properly, just a slomo version from an angle deliberately picked to show as little contact on the ball as possible. Many refs will have looked at that & thought he wasn't really trying to get the ball, so they're going to be watching him really closely. Any midfielder of De~Jong's hard tackling type is going to commit a couple of fouls during a game. If they card him for them; he's off. Then in the next game he can't go in for tackles in case it happens again so he's ineffective, as is our defensive midfield without him.

It all depends on how many refs have taken the time to watch the challenge from other angles or how many have followed the media frenzy. He needs to watch it in Europe for a start.

[Mase]

I don't know about anyone else, but I'm getting De Jong 34 on the back of my shirt ASAP because of this!