Sports Then and Now

Andy Carroll

In their recent encounter with Swansea, West Ham won by 2-0 to come out victorious, but at the cost of a red card for West Ham striker Andy Carroll.

Red Card
As a result of the red card, Carroll will now be forced to miss matches with Aston Villa, Norwich and Southampton, a fact which is certain to be playing on his mind, but also on the mind of manager Sam Allardyce, as Carroll set up both of the two goals scored against Swansea.

Similarly, having only played 5 games this season, and only 15 games in the 12 months between March 2013 and Feb 2014, many are frustrated that Carroll has only been a regular fixture a handful of times, despite the player having so much potential.

Appeal Process
The decision for the red card came in the 59th minute by referee Howard Webb, a decision which the Hammers disagreed with.  As a result, West Ham attempted to repeal the decision. In support of the appeal, manager Allardyce has stated that Webb had made an “obvious error”, but that “There has to be somebody to look at that in the cold light of day and say that is certainly not a red card”.

Therefore, the appeal went ahead, but was unfortunately dismissed by the FA under the grounds that the club could not put a panel of 3 people who could explain why the referee had made a bad decision in their decision to send the Hammer striker off after making contact with Swansea’s Flores’s head.  Read the rest of this entry →

If you are one of the five or six people who have actually read any of my other irresponsibly chimeric screeds (hi Mom, Aunt Kate), then you no doubt realize I have a peculiar fondness for the bizarre and the off beat.

I also possess a passion for the sport of soccer, which is a fortuitous thing, as the world of association football is literally overflowing with all manner of chiseling crooks, dangerous thugs, craven lunatics and twisted perverts. This means that the well of weirdness that FIFA keeps in the secret attic of a small church in southern France will never run dry, much to the satisfaction of those like myself who take great pleasure to revel in the arcana of the beautiful game.    This is something that many American fans overlook; the petty dramas of the transfer market, the vicious hatred between rivals fans, the wealth of impossible personalities and the far fetched happenings of international soccer.

Take the case of the Togolese national team. I mean, imagine you are a Togolese international, and you awake one morning, switch on your TV and see a match report from a friendly in Riffa, Bahrain that you are pretty sure never happened–at least not with the Togo team you play for. Read the rest of this entry →