Quote (zarkadon @ 27 May 2018 21:03)
The angle is too shit to make a proper judgement, but if he did it on purpose it wouldn't surprise me, as that's the kind of thing I meant with "marking territory". Obviously an elbow hit like that one isn't going to injure anyone, just distract and piss off the opponent. Definitely disgraceful behaviour that should be punished, Materazzi-esque for sure, but not something that can cause an injury.
imo neither the Salah nor Karius incidents were with the intention of injuring. The first one was just unfortunate and probably shouldn't be punished beyond dangerous play, while the second seems deliberate from the only angle I've seen, and should be definitely punished, but Ramos objective there was to piss off and distract Karius, not injure him.
funny you'd say that because not even an hour ago i was talking with my brother about it and told him i think he's worse than materazzi...
that being said though, i'm fully aware that it's hard to accuse your own players of seriously bad intentions, but the frequency in which really bad fouls, which could easily result in severe injuries, happen when ramos is around, is ridiculous.
pissing off an opponent you can do by taunting and verbally abusing them, marking your territory by pushing, shoving, holding, stepping on their foot... but elbowing someone's head, flying two footed challenges, manipulating limbs while putting your whole body weight into it is something else - and although freak accidents can and do happen all the time, we tend to give the benefit of the doubt way too often - not just with ramos but across the board. i said it before and i'll say it again - even as a somewhat decent athlete you're way more in control of what you do, even in split seconds, than we generally give PROFESSIONAL athletes credit for.
This post was edited by fender on May 27 2018 02:29pm