Tactically… Anderlecht lost 1-0 at Dinamo Zagreb on Thursday night in the Europa League. Penalty in the last seconds. VAR steps in, the referee points to the spot: Oleg Reabciuk, trying to slide in and intercept the ball, touched it with his arm.
I read the reactions on Walfoot on Friday lunchtime, on the bonnet of the car outside the ground. Andrew Omobamidele said: “How could Oleg have kept his arms behind his back in that situation? Asking the question is answering it.” Me, I put the question to the dressing room. On Tuesday I took out the folder, page “defence”, and set up the drill: sliding tackle, hands behind the back.
Result. Our left back slid two metres on the artificial pitch without touching the ball, or anyone. The second one stopped before setting off, to work out where to put his elbows. The third asked if he could hold his water bottle, “to keep his hands busy”. I said no. He tackled with the bottle anyway.
The level in the third provincial division (Belgium’s Sunday amateur leagues) has gone way up, people don’t realise: we have the same arm problems as the Europa League. What we don’t have is someone watching the replay. With us, the ball hits an arm, the club delegate (our volunteer match official) looks up from his bread roll, says “didn’t see anything”, and we replay it. My dressing room doesn’t need VAR, it has the club delegate. Eating.
Léo Pétrot put it simply: “You can’t exactly cut his arms off! It’s terribly frustrating.” I confirm, I checked on Tuesday, you can’t. I even tried the middle option, arms crossed on the chest. The player went down on his back like an ironing board, and it took three minutes to get him up, almost a VAR delay.
Silly question, but if you tackle without arms, what do you get up with?
Anderlecht stay on zero out of six, after Lyon and Zagreb, and play in the Belgian Cup on Sunday, away at Beerschot, joint leaders of the Challenger Pro League (Belgium’s second tier). Pétrot wants qualification “with good football”. We play on Sunday too. Instruction from the team talk: no tackling. We stay on our feet, arms by our sides, like in the team photo.
It’s true, we checked: Walfoot.
