After Chelsea beat West Ham 4-1, after Jose Mourinho skipped the post-match press conference in protest and Shaun Wright-Phillips finally had the night that he has dreamt about since coming to Chelsea, there was time enough to look back to before the match and the brick-throwing incident on Chelsea’s team bus.
Frank Lampard (to his credit) was not miffed about it. Lamps, if you recall, has been pretty calm through the rough patches – you have to be if you cop the sort of criticism that he does.
Lampard:
“The window got shattered. It made a huge bang. But that’s football – it happens because there are emotions.
There isn’t too much point on dwelling on it as long as no-one gets hurt.”
Lampard is being far too kind. Emotions do not allow you to violate the law, and do I really need to tell you that throwing a rock at a bus constitutes putting the passengers in danger and therefore is a violation of any country’s law, let alone the UK with it’s strict rules?
But why am I raising all this fuss?
This isn’t about West Ham fans being emotional, or West Ham fans being wrong. It’s simply that we have too many situations where fans are excused for their behavior because of ’emotions’ in the game. That is bullshit. Fans have the same responsibility as players – to keep a check on their temper. The players, if you remember, are paid that much to play, not to cop abuse from the fans.
Here’s an interesting thought – control the boos and the abuse and see if you can drive footballer wages down too…
Enough leeway for the fans. We need to be more responsible, and it starts with controlling our hate for the opposition.
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