Silly question, but where is the line? I listened to Filip Joos on 90 Minutes, well, I read what he said there, as reported by VoetbalPrimeur. The background: Jan-Robert Vanwesemael, of STVV, got a red card against Club Brugge after an incident with Mamadou Diakhon. Filip Joos thinks too little attention is paid to what happened just before.
According to him, Diakhon had the ball just before and was making Mickey Mouse ears with his hands to taunt. And then he said a sentence I copied into my notebook, under the tab “unwritten rules”: “You can do anything with the ball, you can even stand on it like Boussoufa or Vanden Borre, but this was really nursery-class behaviour from Diakhon.”
So I made two columns. Allowed: anything with the ball, standing on it. Forbidden: Mickey Mouse ears. I looked for the rest of the list. Hands as spectacles? The little windmill? I checked, and actually nobody knows. I’m told it’s “a question of limits”. Fine, but what does that mean?
What interests me is that the rule seems to live in the feet. As long as it’s the ball, it’s fine. Once the hands get involved, you change category. In basketball, the hands are the whole sport. I looked.
Filip Joos added that, as a referee, he would sooner book Diakhon than Vanwesemael, even if it’s perhaps childish too to let yourself be baited. “But still: it was over the top,” he said. So there are two possible offences: making the ears, and noticing them. I opened a third tab.
With us, the limit is the touchline. When you can see it.
He also talked about driving to Brussels by tractor if Vanwesemael is suspended. I asked the newsroom whether that was an appeals procedure. They said no. Anyway, I still have a lot to learn.
It’s true, we checked: VoetbalPrimeur.be.
