I am going to expose to you who I am and the type of
thinking I have about the world. Like
most, I have opinions on things that disgust and / or intrigue me. I will use this new York times
article by Nick Miller addressing the suspension of the Qataris player Madibo by FIFA for the bone crushing hit on Kone in the 2026 matchup held in Vancouver. Read the article here: Madibo’s
five-match ban is absurd. FIFA reacted to the result of his foul on Kone, not
the foul itself - The Athletic
Let me first state that to me the hit did not look
particularly egregious at the time. I did not have a field level view and the
immediate disability Ishmael Kone experienced was not even the main feature of
the play, that being the game itself.
Here is the Geist of the times article, a penalty was issued
and then increased from yellow card to red. In the next chapter he gets
suspended for 5 games. In hockey a five game suspension can be given for a nasty
hit. I have no doubt Madibo deserved the penalty he originally got. The league,
or in this case the FIFA determines the hit was worthy of a suspension we are
assuming there is not more politics in Soccer than Hockey.
The NYT article finishes with this:
“Hopefully Qatar will appeal and the decision will be
reversed. But as things stand, FIFA have reacted to the outcome of an incident,
rather than the incident itself.”
The outcome of the incident was immediate for the Canadian player
and since it escaped the refs view it was play on. But we have video review and
a subsequent ruling of a yellow card elevated to a red. Why does the author
believe the outcome is different from the incident?
For instance, I rob a bank and amongst the treasures I have
purloined is a finger of St. George. Suddenly this heist has taken on a new
dimension. Instead of a max two-day news cycle, we have an indignity that
ignites a crowd albeit only the followers of the Egyptian Coptic church of
thousands, over an extended period of time. My question is, in your opinion do
you think there will be more members of the public in the court room that day, when
it arrives, as it will because banks too have video review, when it is set to go
to trial, or in the FIFA board room when they reassess the incident on appeal
from Qatar?
The question hinges on your degree of disgust. I have my own
thoughts, you may have some too, but for me an “all is well that ends well,”
approach has always served me. It is my excuse for not having achieved the
potential I was always informed I possessed. I never sought a greater
punishment be meted out on someone who did me wrong and I have had some doozies.
I just sucked it up and tried to shake it off. I rarely ever even considered
litigation. The types of incidents I have faced were for the most part just
regular misunderstandings of which some got violent or that got inflated by
someone or someone’s lawyer. For the most part, forgotten in the collective
memory in a matter of hours.
The problem with this Times columnist’s opinion is that he
is suggesting there is some form of justice that does not track directly from
an incident to the harm of it. The suggestion is that after all the smoke has
settled there is a point when we can pretend there was no incident and the
consequences are only minor, in retrospect, because there is no longer the same
level of public outrage. And it may be true to reality to expect it, but to say
he hopes Qatar appeals is to suggest they might have a case. I think the damage
is done and there was a ruling. It needs to be upheld and that is the end of
it. His opinion on whether to appeal merely asks his readers to shift their
attention from the victim to the perpetrator.
The NYT article suggests there is an appeal to be made. Saying it is because Madibo is a small-time player or is not significant in the world of Footie that he is being targeted as a scapegoat, made into an example. Is that not how the law works? Is there not a law for the rich and famous and another less effective one for the poor and insignificant?
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