As Jonjo Shelvey raked his studs down the length of Paul Pogba’s leg on Wednesday night, I knew the disgusting challenge would get no coverage in the UK media.
I also knew that had it been a Pogba dive we’d be hearing about it for days. Why is that?
Shockingly bad refereeing from Mariner on that disgusting Shelvey foul. And the bigger disgrace will be the lack of coverage it will get because it's not a dive.
— Daily Cannon (@DailyCannon) January 2, 2019
This isn’t the first time I’ve written about this issue. Just like pundits with diving or spitting or handshakes, it’s my own personal pet peeve.
The last time I got my typewriter out about it, Arthur Masuaku had just been given a six-game ban for spitting at an opponent. In case you aren’t good at maths, that’s the same number of games as Ryan Shawcross, Martin Tyler and Dan Smith received COMBINED for breaking the legs of Aaron Ramsey, Eduardo, and Abou Diaby. None of those three could simply wipe away their opponent’s ‘disrespect’ and get on with their careers in the same way as Masuaku’s ‘victim’ could with his saliva.
I’ve been spat at.
It’s not pleasant and if that’s your default response to anything in life, then you should perhaps seek help. But would I have preferred the man who spat at me to have snapped my leg like a twig instead? Or perhaps rake his boots down my leg? One action required me to wash, the other, well, we know only too well what can happen there.
On Thursday morning I checked the Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph and Guardian, three papers that lead the footballing agenda. If they talk about it, the others follow.
Between them, they mentioned Shelvey three times.
The Telegraph listed him in the lineups.
The Daily Telegraph didn't mention it AT ALL. Mentions of 'Shelvey' highlighted on this page: pic.twitter.com/LHjJubQYKM
— Daily Cannon (@DailyCannon) January 3, 2019
The Guardian mentioned him coming on as a sub.
Guardian no better – "Mo Diamé limp off to be replaced by Jonjo Shelvey would disrupt Benítez’s gameplan." only mention of him in their report
— Daily Cannon (@DailyCannon) January 3, 2019
The Mail, at least, included a line saying he should have seen red.
"Shelvey should have then seen red for a high boot on Pogba that went unpunished" line in the middle of an article the sum total of Daily Mail's coverage. That's it.
— Daily Cannon (@DailyCannon) January 3, 2019
Nowhere was there a description of the challenge that saw Shelvey deliberately – and you could not do this action any other way – rake his studs down almost the entire length of the Frenchman’s long leg. There were no little segments to highlight the incident, no editorials opining on the ‘scourge of the game’.
Let’s imagine for a minute that Pogba had dived to win a penalty instead. Do you think the media would have been so quiet about that?
Thankfully, Pogba was OK to continue and doesn’t seem to have suffered any ill-effects. His injury was compounded by getting a lecture from Marriner about his reaction while Shelvey was barely even spoken to, if at all.
We all know that unless there is an outcry in the media the authorities will do nothing to address any problems. They were never going to go back to deal with Shelvey after the game. Andre Marriner gave a free kick so unless he admitted he got the call wrong in taking no further action, the FA simply say their hands are tied by the referee’s report and nobody questions that. Referees rarely, if ever, admit mistakes, so the FA get to hide behind rules of their own making to justify their inaction.
The FA’s own guidelines are more flexible than they want you to know, by the way. They can and will look at incidents included in the referee’s report, but you need to make sure you get adequate coverage in the media to force their hand.
Sadly, we all know what garners the most column inches. Just ask Eduardo if you still aren’t sure. Did his leg break or ‘dive’ cause a bigger uproar? I remembering his so-called dive against Celtic being featured on the ITV News. Not the sports section – the actual news!
I’ve been following football for a long time and I have never known people to care about dangerous and reckless challenges the way they do about diving, spitting and handshakes. I don’t mean normal tackles that are part of the game, or even accidentally bad tackles that can and do happen. I mean stuff like this from Shelvey who, I’m sure pundits will tell us is ‘not that kind of player’ even though he very clearly is as his own actions on Wednesday night showed us.
The question we should be asking now, however, is what kind of people are we that we let the media dictate our outrages at the cost of player’s safety?