Photo courtesy of Football365
Firstly, I have to congratulate the English FA on the swift conclusion of their quest to bring Liverpool cannibal Luis Suarez to justice.
The FA have been exhaustive in their efforts to crucify Suarez at every available opportunity and this continuous vilification of the Uruguayan looks to have finally paid off for them, so well done to the FA.
In case any of you were wondering, I am being rather sarcastic.
By his own admission Suarez is becoming annoyed with the constant scrutiny in England and is set for talks with the Liverpool hierarchy next week with regards to a potential move in the summer.
The FA have this annoying habit of jumping on the media bandwagon and getting swept up in a frenzy of publicity. The British media had already decided Suarez’s guilt before the independent panel even had a chance to be convened. Eventually when the panel came together to discuss their findings and deliberate, their perception of Suarez would have no doubt been skewed by the media.
Handing out a 10-match ban the FA cited violent conduct as the charge and that a 3-match ban was clearly insufficient. It would be interesting to see the sentencing guidelines for a violent conduct charge as a leg breaking tackle gets a 3-match ban yet a bite, without breaking the skin I might add, gets a 10-match ban. I fail to see the severity in a nibble that hardly connected as weighed against Martin Taylor’s leg shattering challenge on Eduardo in 2008 that only bought a 3-match ban.
So, it’s quite clear that the FA’s guidelines for sentencing based on the severity of an incident need a little work.
Another problem the FA are going to have to face is that they are facing increasing calls for their appeals process to be overhauled as there have been complaints of totalitarianism. When a sentence is handed down by the FA it can be appealed, but there’s really no point as they had a 99.5 percent conviction rate between 2010-11 with not one of those convictions being over turned by the appeals panel.
The FA’s way or the highway, it would seem.
Which consequently brings me to the lasting repercussions of such a one-sided system. The FA wish the Premier League to be heralded as the greatest league in the world with the best players, but how are they going to attract the best players, especially South American players, if they are harshly punishing what many from that region would deem acceptable? The Neymar’s, Edinson Cavani’s and the Radamel Falcao’s are going to give the Premier League a wide berth if that’s the case.
Suarez will be a huge loss to the league, but if the FA get their way, he may not be the last.
James Hilton is a soccer writer for www.RantSports.com. Follow him on Twitter , Facebook or add him to your network on Google
