We don’t want to suck the life out of football.. Sterling is innocent!
PEP GUARDIOLA was absolutely spot on about Raheem Sterling’s celebration and subsequent sending off against Bournemouth on Saturday.
“He went over to celebrate and he came back,” said the Manchester City boss. “So I don’t know what happened – I would like to know. “Tell me the reason why we can’t celebrate with the fans, maybe we play without the fans? “Maybe someone can call me as I don’t understand.” I don’t understand it, either, and I’d go as far as to say it was a disgrace that he got sent off for celebrating with the paying public – something that’s such an emotive part of our sport. If a player who has scored a winner, a lastminute winner or a sensational goal can’t run and jump into the crowd then there is something seriously wrong. And it just goes to show that football has become oversensitive and is now run by jobsworths who have lost touch with what the game is fundamentally about. Of course, we don’t want to see people in seats getting hurt or jumping two or three rows down to grab a player when he runs over to celebrate with them.
But if a player goes and hugs and high-five supporters, then surely that is part of the game.
Some people will say, ‘Well, players know the rules, they’ve been told already so they shouldn’t do it’. OK. But when you score a goal, particularly a crucial late goal, you just don’t know what to do with yourself.
Your immediate thought certainly isn’t, ‘Hey, I’ve just scored the winner, so what I’m going to do is wait here for my team-mates to arrive and then we’ll all shake hands before walking back to our half together in a nice, orderly fashion’.
Look at the footage of when I scored the winner in the famous 4-3 game between Liverpool and Newcastle – I didn’t know what to do with myself.
I just ran off like a crazy guy, like a chicken with his head cut off. So Pep’s right and I’d love to see the Football Association, Premier League and English Football League sit down and say, ‘Right, let’s have a bit of common sense here’.
Referees can show some commonsense in these situations as well, rather than hiding behind the laws.
There’s enough ambiguity in the rules of the game, we see enough decisions being handled differently from one week to the next for them to show some flexibility.
If one of them then gets marked down for a decision, they should all come together and say, ‘Look, we don’t want to suck the life out of football’.
And if they stand their ground, what are the authorities going to do, sack them all?
It’s not like the suits don’t listen to what officials tell them, either, it’s a two-way street.
So there’s no way Sterling should have seen red.
He went from exhilaration to the deck in a matter of seconds and that can’t be right.