FOR those who doubt the legitimacy of Liverpool’s controversial penalty on Monday night, answer me this. Had David Ngog not tumbled – okay, dived – over the late tackle of Birmingham midfielder Lee Carsley, what would have happened?
There are two likely outcomes, the first being that Ngog would have been scythed down resulting in a clear penalty – and a probably injury.
Remember this is a player so reckless in the challenge that he once put Everton team-mate Tim Cahill out of commission for eight weeks with a mistimed lunge.
Alternatively, the young French striker could have hurdled Carsley’s leg, which would have slowed his march on goal and allowed Birmingham defenders to recover. No penalty, despite the infringement. Honest, perhaps, but hardly fair.
Instead, Ngog took the only option any top-level striker would have in his position. He dived, won a spot kick and avoided spending the next three months on the treatment table.
Steven Gerrard was lambasted for a similar incident in a 1-1 draw with Sheffield United on the opening day of the 2006/07 Premier League season.
The Reds skipper won a penalty, which Robbie Fowler converted, after stumbling as he tried to skip over the dangerous challenge of Blades’ Chris Morgan.
Referee Rob Styles defended the award by insisting that, under the laws of the game, it was irrelevant that there had been no contact.
He added that the rules state a penalty can be awarded if a player is disadvantaged by taking evasive action to avoid a tackle in the box.
Football folk are simple folk, though – they only see things in black and white.
Ultimately, if a player makes a challenge as poor in the penalty area as the ones perpetrated by men who probably don’t belong at this level, like Carsley or Morgan, then they deserve to concede a spot kick.
Ngog’s theatrical fall has prompted renewed campaigns to “ban the divers†and “beat the cheatsâ€.
But where are calls to clamp down on the defenders kicking lumps out of the strikers and flair players who light up the Premier League and are afforded scant protection?
What’s the greater menace in football – divers or the yard dogs who endanger the careers of their fellow professionals?
Unfortunately in Britain many pundits believe it to be the former.
There’s always a great deal more fuss, of course, when it’s a foreign player going to ground rather than Englishmen like Michael Owen and Wayne Rooney.
It’s not that I condone cheating, but it is not cheating for a player to highlight foul play. There’s a stark difference between what Ngog did and, say, what the worst offenders of the English top flight Didier Drogba and El Hadji Diouf get up to each weekend – players who are solely out to deceive referees.
The likes of Fernando Torres and formerly Cristiano Ronaldo spend 90 minutes being kicked, pulled and elbowed by stoppers incapable of containing their blazing talents by legal means.
They rarely find solace from the match officials – unless they go down like they’ve been shot. That appears to be the only way to get their attention.
It might be unmanly and unsightly but what is the alternative?
Perhaps if referees clamped down on the thugs you’d find strikers would more willing to stay on their feet.
