THE SPITTY GROUND
When it was reported last Friday that Nottingham Forest owner Evangelos Marinakis had been landed with a five-match stadium ban for “improper behaviour” around the tunnel area following their defeat to Fulham last month, Football Daily can’t have been alone in wondering what exactly it was the Greek businessman could have done to merit such a hefty punishment. Considering Nuno Espírito Santo and Morgan Gibbs-White had received shorter bans on the same day for slinging a few effs and jeffs at match referee Josh Smith and his team of match officials, it turns out Big Vange’s suspension was imposed for the similar – but crucially very different and far more serious – crime of gobbing off in their direction.
Let the match official take up the story. “As I walked down the tunnel at the end of the match, [Big Vange], the owner of Nottingham Forest was stood on my left-hand side at the end of the tunnel,” he wrote in his match report. “As I walked past him, he spat on the floor next to my left foot. This was also seen by [assistant referee] James Mainwaring and [fourth official] Tim Robinson.” He may have been working on the assumption that nobody was going to buy any argument that hocking up a loogie and expectorating near someone’s feet is a traditional way of greeting around the docks of Athens, but the shipping magnate instead chose to mount a defence that was found “completely implausible”.
He smokes cigars, his defence read. They make him cough, it read. Those coughs contain phlegm, it read. “If he has to spit, he spits in a tissue if one is available, or on the floor if he does not have one available. Sometimes when he coughs spit or phlegm can go to the floor,” it read. “On the day of the incident he was suffering from a hacking cough. He was taking lozenges. As the officials approached he felt a cough coming and he coughed on the floor, down and to his right which was away from the path the officials were taking. He fails to see how coughing [where spit or phlegm can come out from any person] towards the floor in a relatively crowded tunnel is misconduct.” Despite this testimony and quite apart from the fact that the tunnel in question would have been considerably less crowded if a certain someone had been enjoying the comforts of his owner’s box, the independent regulatory commission also pored over what footage of the incident was available and arrived at the conclusion that Big Vange was being less than forthright.
“We are of the view that the footage does not support the suggestion [Big Vange] coughed,” it declared, having studied the City Ground equivalent of the Zapruder film. “Typically, if someone was about to cough, common decency demands that one covers one’s mouth. We are sure [Big Vange] would have covered his mouth if he was about to cough as someone was approaching in the opposite direction. We are sure that [Big Vange] would have covered his mouth if he was about to cough as someone was approaching in the opposite direction. Alternatively, he could have turned away. In our view the footage does not suggest he turned away at all.” So far so grassy knoll, although it didn’t stop the commission concluding that Big Vange “deliberately spat in a disrespectful and disgusting display of contempt towards the match officials” before deciding that his serious misconduct deserved a severe punishment to act as a deterrent. A five-match stadium ban for the Halls Mentho-Lyptus-sucking big man it is then; a tariff that is certainly not to be sneezed or – heaven forbid – coughed at.
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QUOTE OF THE DAY
“I think he was outstanding. The lads are joking about ‘Tiger Tanaka’, who was a Bond villain in one of the best Bond films. They call him ‘Tiger Tanaka’. But after the game today I’ve labelled him ‘James Bond’. He was unbelievable. He saved the world today” – Leeds boss and You Only Live Twice fan Daniel Farke hails summer signing and Japan midfielder Ao Tanaka following his performance in the 2-1 Championship victory over Watford.
FOOTBALL DAILY LETTERS
As I read Sid Lowe’s article on Luka Modric, I was reminded of a mind-blowing stat that I saw the other day, that Modric has now played in more than half of Croatia’s all-time men’s national games (182 out of 363). He has outlasted legends at Real Madrid, including Karim Benzema, Cristiano Ronaldo, Gareth Bale, Sergio Ramos, Marcelo, Toni Kroos, Casemiro and more. That Modric is now 39 and still competing at the highest level, both for club and country, is amazing, and it’s a wonder his name is not brought up as often in discussions about the greats” – Sam Fetherlin.
I know four years is a long time in football but, even still, the change from this to the utterly predictable this with Real Madrid is quite startling” – Noble Francis.
While Arthur Ellis might well have been the ‘man in the middle’ in Berne (yesterday’s Memory Lane, full email edition), this was some years before I was even born. So you’ll have to forgive me (and 1,056 other readers) for remembering the man and his weekly refereeing role in It’s A Knockout. If you can get past Stuart Hall, Arthur adds a ‘smart, aristocratic’ air to the seaside-postcard proceedings. Sadly, 1979 never looked so seedy” – Stephen Gash (and no other readers).
Send letters to the.boss@theguardian.com. Today’s letter o’ the day winner is … Stephen Gash, who lands a Football Weekly scarf. Terms and conditions for our competitions can be viewed here.
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