LADYMAN: Pochettino shows why football has a BIG problem with abuse
It turns out that the best referee in world rugby is friends with Anthony Taylor. Among the many things the recently retired Wayne Barnes must feel for Taylor will surely be a sense of pity.
Barnes — who recently refereed the World Cup final between South Africa and New Zealand at the Stade de France — was once criticised heavily on social media by Springboks director of rugby Rassie Erasmus. It is a famous incident because it’s rare in the sport. Erasmus was banned for two games. Previously he had served 12 months for criticism of another official.
Yet Taylor and his colleagues in football’s Premier League run this gauntlet every week while the sport carries on regardless, to the extent that it’s become normalised. So, yes, Barnes must pity his friend and then some.
Taylor was the match referee when Chelsea held Manchester City to a breathtaking 4-4 draw at Stamford Bridge last Sunday. It was another marvellous afternoon of football yet the way Chelsea manager Mauricio Pochettino behaved towards Taylor’s fourth official Craig Pawson at full time stands as another staging post in our sport’s rapid descent towards the gutter.
He’s a good man, Pochettino. Cares about people. Cares about sport. He apologised publicly within half an hour and not many do that. Fair play.
He still did it, though. He still screamed in Pawson’s face from a distance of about a foot and a half before striding across the turf to have a go at Taylor, too.
Football’s response has been to take into account the yellow card shown to Pochettino by Taylor and consider it case closed.
And so the message here is that all this is OK. It’s not ideal, for sure. But it’s OK. It’s a yellow card offence, the equivalent of what a player receives for a handball, a trip,
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