On Wednesday night, Chelsea went out of the League Cup with a whimper after a very poor performance which didn’t repay the 2,000 fans who trekked to South Wales in bad conditions. Chelsea were poor and Swansea deserved to go through, simple as that. But there was that moment of controversy which was talked about so much today by pundits and players alike throughout the country. That of course was the Hazard red card for apparently ‘kicking’ the ball boy, when really he was just trying to get the ball. In the 80th minute, with Swansea seemingly looking very comfortable, and Chelsea hadn’t caused much problems for Swansea, and yet still one of their ball boys decided to start time wasting. Straight away, that is wrong.
A ball boy’s job is to get the ball back to continue play as soon as possible, and yet this kid decided to first let the ball roll past him and then to block Hazard from getting the ball back by lying on the ball. Hazard trying to get the boy to get the ball back, but the boy didn’t move, so Hazard kicked THE BALL from under the boy, and went to give it to Tremmel. Then you see the boy (even though he’s 17, I will use boy due to his reaction) roll around as if he’s been thumped in the chest, and looked very close to tears, even nearly crying which all came even after Hazard didn’t even touch the kid.
This was an example of clear underhand tactics by Swansea to slow the game down and give them any advantage they could get, even with a 2-0 lead. No shock to see that on the boys twitter page he had said that he was going to be timewasting when he was behind the goal. Absolutely outrageous. Why is it a 17 year old is needed to be a ball boy? These are the jobs which academy players that are 11 & 12 years old do, so why is a 17 year old needed? The answer is to be clever and not give the ball back quickly, and to obstruct Chelsea from restarting play quicker. Very convenient as well how his father is a member of the board at Swansea too. Read into that what you will.
It was just an example of how bad society has become when a boy has to roll around and feint injury in order to get a professional footballer sent off, and also after you’ve not done your job by doing it. Quite frankly, the guy got what he deserved if Hazard did touch him, even though replays clearly show that he didn’t. When the incident happened, almost all footballers tweeted their disgust at the decision, questioning what the ball boy was doing getting involved & then the decision to send Hazard off. Noel Hunt, Michael Owen & Gareth Bale were just a few to question the decision, which showed that it wasn’t just Chelsea fans who opposed the red card.
Unsurprisingly Rio ‘I love the attention’ Ferdinand said it was a red card, although I doubt he’d be saying the same had it been one of this team mates committing the ‘offense’. I agree with the fact that Hazard shouldn’t have got involved, and should have let the referee sort it out, but it was clear that Eden just wanted to get the ball back. This was a night that was frustrating for Chelsea as Swansea played so well, but the underhand tactics from Swansea were unnecessary and very unsporting.
So with Chelsea accepting the red card and not appealing, hopefully the matter will be forgotten and we can move on. Unsurprisingly the boy isn’t pressing criminal charges, which is probably what happens when you haven’t even been touched. There doesn’t seem to be a month that goes by when Chelsea aren’t surrounded by controversy, but on this occasion you would have to say that this controversy and media attention is unwarranted. The fact is that any player would try to do the same thing with their team 2-0 down, it was just an attempt to get play going again. With the fact that we now have ball boys who roll around feigning injury after not being touched, it just shows that they’re copying the stars that they watch and copying the not so good elements. Then to amaze me even more, this boy can suddenly get tens of thousands of twitter followers after conning a footballer into being sent off. There’s something very wrong with society.