It was rigor. The regulation says so. Clear. Then, it is normal that – in an “ideal football” – it is not the best thing to expect a defender to jump with his arms glued to his body like a penguin. And not even that he manages to avoid, from his back, his arm being hit by the ball. After all, in an “ideal football”, also other sanctions (among all the infamous “step on foot”) they seem negligible compared to the reference that rigor must beas it was once called: the “maximum punishment”. Instead now even something that would have very clear mitigating circumstances is punished with the maximum sentence, including the impossibility for the defender to avoid contact between the ball and his arm.
“Penalty is when the referee blows his whistle”said the good soul of Vujadin Boskov, in very distant times, to tone things down controversies that this time too are dangerously close to the decisive moments of the championship. But we can’t just talk about this, it would be a huge injustice to a performance, the Inter one, which appeared truly gigantic. Agree, the so-called inertia of the match changed – also from a psychological point of view – from the penalty onwards. Lazio had held their own for half an hour. Then she disappeared. Collapsed. In the end even humiliated. And here a further debate could open up.
Type: IWould nzaghi have done better to slow down his team’s gallops? Do you need more respect in certain situations? The topic is too broad to condense an answer into a few lines. But sport, in general, requires respect for the loser only in the most ethical way possible: the match is played until the end without looking at the result. This applies in general and specifically: stopping at 3 or 4 to zero, for example, could be even less respectful than continuing until the last stroke, the last centimeter. The last goal. Thuram’s.
Senegal
