In the immortal words of Virgil Van Dijk: “who cares?”
The man of the moment, Mauricio Pochettino, surely on his way to leading Spurs to quadruple glory before wrestling the Old Trafford reins away from the baby-faced managerial legend next summer, once said of diving that itֹ’s “a small detail” after two of his players, one of them English and the best striker in the world according to at least one half of the Neville school for special pundits, had blatantly dived for two penalties at Anfield. There was no major wringing of hands at that point, as far as I recall, so the moral outrage in the aftermath of yesterday’s game has me at a loss. Morals?? In this fucking sport?? Do me a favour. Hypocrisy, on the other hand...
Which is, of course, to say nothing of the factual reality that this was clearly a foul. Clearly. Paul Dummett himself knew better than anyone — his sheepish acceptance of the referee’s decision was writ large across his face for all to see. We all know that your typical footballer loves a good argument with a match official, often over something as mundane as the award of a throw, but the Newcastle United man said nothing.
He took a calculated risk, you see, the kind you too might feel fully justified in taking if the team you were playing against hadn’t been awarded a penalty at home in the Premier League in over a year. He attempted to slow the rapid forward progress of Liverpool’s Egyptian genius by sneakily and momentarily grabbing his arm, thereby hoping to throw him off balance and give his teammate a better chance to clear the ball. In the process, he dared the referee to make a decision where so many before him had failed to do so, most recently when Victor Lindelof barged Salah in the back with arm and shoulder at 0-0 against Manchester United a couple of weeks back.
Bear in mind, too, that Salah is a player who has recently felt the full, considerable bulk of Steve Cook raking his studs down his Achilles tendon at Bournemouth and stayed on his feet to score. Even more recently, he failed to collapse at the Kop end at 1-0 during the second-half of the crucial Champions League decider against Napoli when David Ospina came haring off his line and made contact with him, instead trying (and failing) to chip the Colombian in a move that had yours truly wondering aloud why our players are so stupid. You won’t hear about these moments as the witch-hunt gathers pace over the coming weeks and months, but they are important points to note in order to understand Dummett’s mental process for the penalty incident yesterday, because he would have no doubt felt hugely confident at the prospect of his opponent trying to stay on his feet and score despite the foul.
He couldn’t have known that on this occasion: (a) Salah would also dare the referee to make a decision, and (b) even more shockingly, Mr. Scott would make the correct call. Hey, sometimes it happens. Sometimes it doesn’t and you get away with it. That’s football. What mystifies me, though, quite aside from what was going through the Newcastle defender’s head taking such a risk when it was only “one-season wonder” Mo Salah that was bearing down on his penalty area, was why a legendary former defender like Phil Neville was so reticent to give Dummett due credit later that night for as good a tactical foul as you’ll see on a purely technical level, given that he even cleverly shielded the action from the view of the linesman with his body in the process.
Phil knows the dark arts of defending. This is a man who has scored an own-goal, given away a (winning) penalty and been sent off (twice) in Merseyside derbies, a terrifying trifecta matched only by the time he gave away a penalty in the dying seconds against Romania to knock England out of Euro 2000. Surely he, of all people, knows better than to sacrifice praise for the cunning, old-school and, above all, manly goddammit exploits of a fellow member of the left-back club at the altar of labelling Johnny Foreigner a cheat for the millionth time. Surely to God we’re past that now? Surely to God we’ve been past that since Michael Owen played the Argies at their own game in 1998, falling like a little feather at the attentions of Roberto Ayala? Weep for Paul Dummett, brothers and sisters — unappreciated in his own time, even by his own kind. An unholy future union with Sean Dyche surely awaits.
Joking aside...Phil Neville knows fuck all about anything, and if he does, he’s a gifted actor. This is a man who for many years plied his trade at Goodison Park, a place where any opposition contact with the ball above shinpad-level results in a chorus of “HANDBALL!!!” and “PENALTY!!!” from the stands. His perspective on penalties should therefore be afforded much the same regard as the rage-filled screams of your average Bluenose round Goodison way of a Saturday afternoon.
Speaking of Nevilles, earlier this year Phil’s brother Gary stated in commentary for Sky that Erik Lamela’s aforementioned Defoe-in-Platoon-style collapse at the merest touch of Van Dijk’s knee at Anfield was a definite penalty. To be fair, for the entirety of Neville’s playing career under Alex Ferguson at Manchester United it probably would have been a stonewall penalty for any player wearing red at Old Trafford, certainly lest the referee be forced to run for his life with eleven psychopaths at his heels. So maybe his opinion, and that of every click-baiting, hot-taking pundit on this subject and many others, should be taken with a grain of salt too?
I mean, football supporters are, to a greater or lesser extent, all hypocrites when it comes to this kind of stuff, aren’t we? We normally couldn’t be objective to save our lives, although I recall the vast majority of us readily admitting that the foul which most closely resembles Dummett’s that I can think of (Dirk Kuyt grabbing Aleksandr Hleb’s arm in a very similar manner against Arsenal during the first leg of the Champions League quarter-final at the Emirates in 2008) was a stonewall penalty, just like Saturday, and how relieved we were that the ref missed it. But, and it feels stupid even saying it at this point, the entire point of this football analysis business is supposed to be objectivity. Newcastle were on a hiding (to nothing, plus just a hiding) either way yesterday. It’s ridiculous that an already-truncated show like Match of the Day wasted precious seconds discussing it at all.
The fear for the Nevilles and all the rest must now be that it really doesn’t matter anymore. The referee could have waved Dummett’s foul away or Salah could have dived for twenty more penalties, it simply wouldn’t have mattered, not really. Newcastle were beaten yesterday once Lovren’s screamer nearly ripped the back of the Kop-end net off. The game could have ended 1-0, 2-0 or 3-0, 10-0, it doesn’t matter. Like 12 of the other 19 Premier League teams this season, Newcastle were never scoring in this game. Neither would Manchester United or Leicester City had it not been for goalkeeping errors. The rest of the current top-5, also second-to-fifth on the scoring charts (Arsenal, Chelsea, Manchester City and Spurs), have managed 3 goals in 360 minutes against us so far. Burnley’s goal was offside and involved a foul on the goalkeeper. Cardiff’s was a mere consolation in a 4-1 defeat.
Prior to yesterday, over 400 days had passed since a referee last gave Liverpool a home penalty in the Premier League, during which time the media persisted with the risible party line, the utter delusion, that the Anfield crowd influences officials, in the face of all available evidence to the contrary. After a disgraceful decision against Stoke towards the end of last season (a blatant handball), for example, one that could have ultimately cost Liverpool Champions League football, it was Klopp’s opposite number Paul Lambert who complained about the officials. The German merely blanked the linesman on the post-match handshake and said very little more about it. Liverpool — players, manager, coaches, supporters — don’t intimidate officials, they don’t even try, and if they do, they’re terrible at it. Truly.
Me, I think we should be tormenting officials at every turn, just like every successful team of the past three decades — e.g. Ferguson’s Manchester United, every side coached by Guardiola and Mourinho, Real Madrid regardless of manager, Chelsea under multiple managers, Spain — have done, because it’s an edge that we will continue to be unable to avail of while Klopp’s outbursts are limited to ear-bashing the fourth official during the 90 minutes and his players’ influence limited to Hendo or Milner having a quiet word with the referee. Needless to say, had Dejan Lovren driven Cristiano Ronaldo’s head and shoulder into the Kiev turf last May, there would have been a second Spanish inquisition in the NSC Olimpiyskiy Stadium.
Whatever Liverpool achieve under Klopp, they're going to do it the honest way, or at least as honest as anyone gets these days. Translation: they're going to do it the hard way. So fuck tainting any of our players as cheats, especially when we're getting no rewards for it on the pitch.
So under the circumstances, I’m sure the boys will forgive me if I don’t give two shits whether Mo Salah embellished his fall yesterday, but I will say that it’s just good manners to wait until a player has actually cheated before wringing your hands in moral outrage, like that time another utter fool accused Luis Suárez of kissing the tattoos of his family’s names on his wrist as a means of rubbing Mansfield Town’s noses in his fiendishness after a goal that came off his hand. Now that the Uruguayan’s accursed jockstrap has passed to the Egyptian King, we can but hope that he at least washed it first.
In the meantime, let us acknowledge that without a single penalty in over a year of home games, all the more incredible given the speed and precision of their attack, Liverpool were still good enough to secure a top-4 finish in May and sit undefeated at the top of the table in late-December. Imagine how good they’d be if they actually got their share of penalties? Maybe Phil, Kevin, Dion and the rest are scared that we’re about to find out?
Referees giving penalties for fouls, though, eh? The game is fucked.
