OPINION: The Øvrebø Connundrum
By: Sam | May 8th, 2009
One day cooler heads will view the dire events of the Champions League Semifinal 2nd Leg — the questions about the decisions — and see it as a Chelsea implosion. That is, the self-destruction of a team that’s just not good enough. A team which is simply unable — in Mourinho’s words — to “be champions”.
For UEFA Ref, Tom Øvrebø, his performance on the night was John-Arne-Riise-esque: Norwegian & vaquely one-sided. Mr Ø, indeed, had a poor match but it was not that bad under the difficult circumstances.
On account of the beauty of Barça’s footballing, a favoritism for them was installed in the Zeitgeist. That feeling was is amplified by the ugliness of Chelsea’s footballing in general and by the negative approach Chelsea took last week to the semifinal 1st Leg at Camp Nou in particular.
Mr Ø probably had this very intuition clanking about his subconscious (Barça = Beautiful) and was loath to give Chelsea a significant decision unless clearly, visibly earned. Refs, after all, are people.
I felt the worst decisions on the evening were the Pique handball, which was clearly a loss of an earned-advantage by Chelsea (despite being ball-to-hand) — a deserved penalty for Chelsea to take, if seen. The other was the sending-off of Barça’s Abidal which, in my opinion, was pure simulation by Anelka — a frame-job. If the rest are just gray calls, these two mistakes largely offset as well. However, in the final calculus an unwarranted dismissal for Barça is the heavier burden to carry. It is Barça who should have been howling like a petulant child who has missed his dose of Ritalin, rather than Chelsea.
When we saw Ballack’s & Drogba’s anger spill over on the telly, you can be sure this was their own anger at themselves for not taking earlier and obvious chances. Champions win football matches through goals, and do not passively await decisions on points.
The important point I haven’t seen made — which favors Mr Øbrevø — is that by diving all over Christendom (and Asia too), Drogba & Anelka make a technically difficult job by the Referee EVEN MORE DIFFICULT. These players — and Drogba in particular — cannot be trusted NOT to simulate, so a ref’s bias to reward them sparingly is assured & reinforced.
Which of a thousand falli fatti is CLEAR, I ask you? The disadvantage is self-imposed in the arrogant habit of begging-the-decision.
The weaker parts of Drogba’s character have boomeranged upon him (as they do, and should, for us all) and upon the Chelsea Football Club. Consequently, I am glad to see this truth acknowledged in the Club’s murmuring without hesitation about Drogba’s transition out, although I wonder if their firm price doesn’t reflect a lack of sincerity. Sort of takes QPR & Sheffield Wednesday out of the running. It’s good & necessary for Chelsea to cut right to the chase, remove the cancer and move on to next year. Ballack should go too, but only because his footballing contributions are so conspicuously prosaic. Let’s be clear that Ballack is not a simulator. Drogba & Anelka — in the mood — get goals, but the net effect of having these two head-cases is more than a club of Chelsea’s ambitions can tolerate.
Roll the tape. I feel Lampard was disgusted by his colleagues’ performances and believe he will agree that all disadvantage & misfortune Chelsea experienced on the day was self-inflicted.
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Comments
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Sorry but Barca’s “supposed beauty” was largely neutralized by Chelsea. Despite the imbalance in possession, Barca and their big name players were held scoreless for 180 minutes.
Agree that Drogba runs hot and cold but, from the team’s perspective, their rightfull place in the Finals was snatched from them pure and simple. They more than outplayed Barca over both legs…
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It doesnt matter if you have 99% percent possession and play beautiful football. Chelsea haven’t LOST to Barca it was because of away goals. Both games ended in DRAW.
Anelka didn’t dive. He tripped himself. Please watch that moment once again, you’ll understand. And noone of Chelsea players complained for red card to ref. For god’s sake, do your homework before you write.
Abidal was lucky to be on the field in 2nd half. He should have been sent off in 1st half itself for challenge on Drogba.
Officials are neutrals and they should be. Ref had a bad game. 2 stonewall penalties were denied.
I can’t believe you have wrote this drivel. Your initial posts used to be level headed.
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Yes, champions win games by goals. But when goal scoring opportunities are denied because of hand balls or tugging inside penalty box then you can’t score goals. To facilitate scoring you have something called as “penalties”. Even if single penalty would have been given, game would have ended 3-0 or 4-1.
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Yeah, I mean, UEFA placed a gag order on ol’ Tom because he was just slightly poor on the night. Give me a break.
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Nice post Sam. Finally a bit of sense.
“But when goal scoring opportunities are denied because of hand balls or tugging inside penalty box then you can’t score goals.”
@Adam…..well if that is the case then Barca should have had two penalties before your first penalty claim. One for the blatant tug on Henry last week and another for this: http://i474.photobucket.com/albums/rr106/coolestcule/1.gif. 4 mins into the 2nd leg. How that would have changed the game.
You see for every decision that you think went against you, there is one that went in your favor. It all evened itself out in the end. You had plenty of chances to score, you didnt take them, your players are much more to blame than the ref. As are our players in the first leg for not taking their chances.
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@Hilal: I commented about this in another article. This is not a handling foul, the ball is being kick into the hand at speed and the player has very little time to react. Referees are instructed by FIFA not to call things like this, the ref didn’t, and that’s exactly what his job is.
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I agree with Dustin.
Out of 4 possible penalties 2 were denied and 2 were 50-50. Even if Henry’s Penalty was given and Chelsea’s all the penalties were given Chelsea would have won the game.
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Assuming Chelsea scored the penalties.
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@Dustin and Adam
You both seem to be forgetting that 2 out of the 4 penalty claims, the two that should have been given, BOTH came after Abidal was wrongfully sent off. That is not even taking into account that Ballack should have been sent off in the 1st leg. Crying injustice is pointless because there was no injustice. The refs made very bad calls in both games, in the end they did not favor anybody. We dont know what would have happened had Abidal not been sent off. Would you have had the two penalty claims? Probably not. Maybe with good refs the two ties would have been completely different but nobody knows who would have won or lost.
Look at the end of it all crying about referees is a childish and immature way to look at it. As Chelsea fans you should be honest with yourselves;
1)Drogba should have taken his chances. Its as simple as that, had he taken them the ref wouldnt have mattered. I personally blame us much more than the ref for not taking our chances in the 1st leg. We SHOULD have won that game 3-0. Bojan, Hleb and Eto’o all should have scored (not counting Henry pen). Drogba also should have scored, 2 goals, one in each leg.
2)Hiddink got it wrong and it cost him. He didnt want to play football even when we were down to 10. He didnt risk enough to try and get an away goal. He should have been braver against a team that we all know doesn’t have the best defense. Especially the second leg when we were without our two best central defenders. It shocked me how much possession we were allowed for 25 mins down to 10. You guys could and should have finished us.
If you dont play to win then you are depending on luck to get you through the tie and that is not the best way to play football. You should have played to win, not to stop us from winning. A team worth half a billion pounds should be able to match anybody head on. Be really honest with yourselves; you played like Sunderland or Stoke would play against Utd or Arsenal. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. With a team worth as much as yours it should have worked and it almost did, but you are still depending on luck. It took us over 180 mins to score, but all it takes is one second, just like Essiens goal.
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Rob,
Well, Chelsea have 2 best penalty takers in the world who have hardly missed any penalties in crunch situation.
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@Hilal: “Abidal was wrongfully sent off”
This is simply not true. Abidal tripped the player, the referee saw it, and he was red carded because the player was on his way to goal.
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@Dustin.
LOL….really? He was tripped? Please show me where he was tripped: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3p8EuX814hI
Even the ridiculously biased pundits on Sky Sports admitted this was nowhere near a foul. I think you need to get your eyesight checked mate.
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@Hilal
Or you can just ask the man that tripped him. Who says he tripped him. He should know, he felt it. Also yes I can see in that video how he nicked the back of his foot causing his leg to hit his other leg, ergo tripping him. I just got LASIK I have 20/15 vision, and I’ve been reffing for 12 years. I guess your expertise would involve watching TV.
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Why, why must you continue to haunt me with your John Arne Riise references?
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Ed – You are so onto me …
In due respect to your question — which I take as sincere — I am personally fascinated by the speed, efficacy & smoothness with which Liverpool dispatched poor Riise to AS Roma after his calamatous o.g. in the Champions League last year against Chelsea. It seemed to me that there was hardly any discussion anywhere, that Liverpool as a family all looked at each other and nodded.
I’m not opposed, per se, to one-footed players. Beckenbauer I believe after a negative experience as an infant never again touched the ball with his left foot. But the extent of Riise’s incapacity with his right boot (in conjunction with his generally unimaginative play), somehow, always makes me chuckle.
Although I believe he is a well-intentioned and perhaps even a good person, his particular mix of skills brings me a — perhaps macabre — personal lift.
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Hilal – Good points well made, by a real man.
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