Eduardo Banned for Two Matches (UPDATE)

By: Martin | September 1st, 2009

I’ve said it before so I won’t rehash it in too much detail here. Eduardo dived. No doubt about it. And that embarrasses me as an Arsenal fan. And I don’t have any problem with the idea of banning players for diving.

But the timing of this is very, very questionable. There has been no recent rule change to suddenly allow UEFA to start doing this. And it’s not like Eduardo was doing something unprecedented that had never happened in UEFA competition before–players like Cristiano Ronaldo and Steven Gerrard have made diving to draw penalties an important part of their games, and hell, Drogba takes similar dives at least 5 times a game, and generally writhes around on the ground in fake agony for a couple of minutes afterward for good measure.

So why now? I know every time we Gunners claim an anti-Arsenal bias, everybody acts like we’re paranoid. But if that’s the case, seriously, could someone explain to me why this particular dive, among all the dives that regularly take place in UEFA competitions, was singled out as being worthy of a suspension? Because I have never heard an adequate explanation for this.

As it is, UEFA crossed a line here, and I’m not sure they’re going to like where it leads. Now that this precedent has been set, every time a club feels an opposing club’s player dived, they’re going to be filing complaints begging UEFA to investigate the incident and suspend the player. Since this happens, oh, roughly every single match or so, UEFA is now going to be bombarded with complaints about diving. And they’re going to have to investigate and determine which dives were suspension-worthy and which dives weren’t, even though they have set out absolutely no criteria for making such decisions.

If you needed further evidence that UEFA is a joke of an organization, easily bullied and willing to cave in to media pressure, I’d say you have it.

UPDATE The club has released an official statement on UEFA’s decision, which reads, in pertinent part:

We have been deeply frustrated by the perfunctory and apparently arbitrary process that Uefa has followed in this instance. We believe it is imperative that Uefa’s explanation for its decision provides clear and comprehensive standards that will be consistently enforced. It is also critical that Uefa provides specific details of the processes it plans to adopt in reviewing all games under its jurisdiction.

And as I said previously, I think that’s the heart of the matter–they need to explain why they suspended a player who dove in this instance when they have consistently failed to do so in the past, and they need to provide guidelines which will be followed in the future. If they don’t, then the process is a complete joke, and it’s going to send the message to the clubs that if someone dives, you just need to complain loud enough and long enough and you’ll get your way. It’s literally no different than those parents at supermarkets who, when their kids want a candy bar and throw a fit, decide that it’s easier to just give in and give them what they want. Is it easier in the short term? Yes, of course, because they stop crying about it. But in the long term, you’re creating a nightmare, because next time they want something, they (and all their brothers and sisters) know that they can get whatever they want by crying and throwing a fit. By taking this action without guidelines or a clearly-explained or defined decisionmaking process, UEFA has sent a clear message to Celtic and all other clubs that if you disagree with a penalty decision, just make enough of a stink about it in the media and you can get a player suspended.