We lesser mortals in the world of football, the fans, seldom have the opportunity to hear what goes on behind the scenes. When a team has had a poor first half, commentators say ‘We can imagine what the manager said to his team at half time.’ But can we? Do we have any idea of the instructions that managers/coaches give to their players? Just occasionally we get some sort of insight.
Tony Adams, in his excellent autobiography ‘Addicted’,
told of instructions from George Graham, the then Arsenal manager, to charge the opposing goalkeeper into the goal at the first corner to unsettle him, as he wasn’t very confident with high balls.
I remember Bobby Charlton commenting on a match when a defender allowed an attacker to go through to score. ‘His manager will have a go at him for not bringing down the attacker,’ he said, letting it be known that managers would instruct their players to bring down opponents by fair means or foul, to prevent a goal scoring chance. This was before the law was introduced making the unfair prevention of a goal scoring opportunity, a sending-off offence.
The Goal of the Month on Match of the Day last Saturday was the wonderful goal scored by Maynor Figueroa of Wigan against Sunderland just before Christmas. If you didn’t see it, you can get some idea of this exceptional goal, when I say that a free kick was given against Sunderland for a foul on Figueroa just inside Wigan’s own half. Figueroa put the ball down and spotting Thomas Sorenson, the Sunderland goalkeeper off his line took a quick kick sending the ball over the head of Sorenson’s who scrambled back but failed to prevent it going in the goal.
When it was first shown Alan Hanson said he didn’t want to take anything away from this amazing long kick, but he blamed the goal on the Sunderland player who had committed the foul. ‘’When I was at Liverpool,’ he recalled, ‘Joe Fagan, the team coach, always stressed that when you had given away a free kick, you must immediately stand on the ball, which the Sunderland player failed to do.’
It’s almost certainly what every coach tells his players, for you see it at every match, every week. Even on our local parks players will do it, copying the antics of their professional counterparts. The idea of course is to prevent the opponents taking a quick free kick. Sounds good advice but it’s against the Laws of the Game, an offence punishable by a caution and yellow card.
In fact it can be penalised under one of two headings.
1) Delaying the restart of the game, although generally this is where players take a long time to restart play at a goal kick or throw-in or other dead ball situations.
2) Failure to retreat the required distance at free kicks, corners or throw-ins.
The question then of course, is why is it tolerated? The only answer I can give is that referees are reluctant to show a yellow card for such a minor technical infringement. This means that I get looks of disbelief when I try to enforce it at my matches, because players, like Alan Hanson, believe it is a legitimate tactic of the game. What most referees would like, but which FIFA fail to understand, is some other punishment that doesn’t necessarily involve a yellow card. The one of course that has been proposed many times is the rugby trick of moving the free kick ten yards forward when players seek to delay the kick.. It was tried but a caution had to be given first, which tended to defeat the object.
What we have to think about as fans, is how many great legitimate goals have we been cheated out of, by this particular instruction from coaches.
Dick Sawdon Smith
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