Of UEFA kangaroo courts and strange bed fellas

Pick up any paper and browse through the back pages, or switch on any sports news channel, and you won’t get enough of the “Let’s rid the game of cheats” mantra peddling the air waves and wires. The suggestion here of course being that simulation is the worst and only form of cheating, and the perpetrators should be ruthlessly punished and made an example of.

I doubt if Eduardo’s defence that Boric’s knee clipped his right ankle matters to the crusaders and summary executioners from the media and UEFA disciplinary hacks. Someone was due a good hiding and Eduardo obliged.

Now we learn that UEFA don’t have the motivation to consistently enforce one of the “laws” in their rule book. Giving Dudu a good hiding will do for now – until at least the next media outcry, probably when a player loses the plot, whips out his Johnson and takes a pee at the foot of the goal post.

So was Wenger right when he called this a witch hunt. You’re damn right it was. I’m not surprised though. Eduardo has been treated worse than murderers and child abusers are treated by the criminal justice system. Whatever happened to the laws of natural justice that suggest that an individual charged with a crime will have the right to present a competent defence? What happened to the belief that an individual is innocent unless proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt? UEFA even went out of their way to fax the wrong Arsenal office in Hertfordshire to tell the club not to even bother mounting a defence.

I sincerely hope the club does not shirk away from fighting this case. This has gone beyond the notion that action was taken to remedy an action to deceive the referee. This is persecution, and the only way UEFA will prove otherwise is by banning every player who dives by 2 matches, regardless of whether the referee issued a yellow card or not.

And the suggestion that this has nothing to do with the Scottish FA flexing its muscles is as ludicrous as suggesting that Wenger is not French. How is the SFA allowed to peddle its own agenda each time a Scottish team is involved or when they’re beaten. Are they going to throw their toys out of the pram every time they’re not happy? Celtic were given a good hiding and their time would be better off spent on improving the Scottish game, instead of their pillow talks with the UEFA hacks to come down hard on folks who upset them.

Anything short of that is a disgrace. Alternatively, they could withdraw Eduardo’s charge, withdraw the ban, issue him a public apology for persecution, and let the referee do his job.