The world, inside football and out, is still full of prickly men. We may never be free of these vengeful, spiteful tackles until we divorce the idea of being beaten on the pitch by a piece of skill from that of being humiliated in public by a cheeky bastard who needs taking down a peg or two. Yet it’s interesting that even as the rules of the game have become more protective of the delicately skilled, that transaction - an actual-eye for a notional-eye - has endured. Defenders were once permitted to tackle from behind, at knee height, using a wide range of rusted farm implements, and referees would stand by and applaud. Of course, from a broad historical angle, Neymar has it easy. A defender may feel justified in lashing out after PSG’s superstars leave him in broken pieces on the floor, but it’s rare to miss a month of football with a fractured metaphoricatarsal. The problem is the violence inflicted by Neymar’s rainbow kicks is entirely non-physical, whereas that which he receives is manifestly real. Sometimes it’s as an early warning, sometimes it’s because they’re having a bad day, and sometimes because it’s easier than, y’know, actually tackling the slippery so-and-so.īut some of the kicks are, as Laurey suggests, kicks of retribution. This isn’t the only reason they kick him, of course. This means they aren’t equipped to respond in kind, which is a shame, really, since football could do with more emergent dance offs. That man has a family! gasps Twitter, every time somebody is unfortunate enough to get nutmegged on television.Īlmost every human being that has ever existed has lacked Neymar’s skill with a football, and the clod-hopping defenders of Ligue 1 are no exception. And football admires and celebrates them as such. On the unfortunate victim’s good name and standing in the community. For a rainbow kick is an assault of a kind: not on the body but on reputation. He may never make it to his promised place in the pantheon, alongside Pelé and Maradona and the rest, but when it comes to exposing the strange, tangled, macho mess that sits in the heart of elite men’s football, he’s the greatest there has ever been.Īs Laurey explains, and he seems to be accurate, what’s going on is a kind of improvised justice. I didn’t ask my players to go and kick Neymar, but I understand why the players had had enough of someone who was looking to tease and taunt them a bit. There are moments when, if you go over the limit a little bit, you have to expect that you are going to get a kick or two. After the game, Thierry Laurey explained to the press that: qIg0DAC6w1- Ball Street January 24, 2019Īt least, that’s what the manager of PSG’s midweek opponents Strasbourg seems to think. Neymar destroys Moataz Zemzemi with a rainbow flick after being kicked by him three times in a row.
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