{"id":7098,"date":"2013-01-24T16:19:29","date_gmt":"2013-01-24T16:19:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/?p=7098"},"modified":"2013-01-24T16:20:10","modified_gmt":"2013-01-24T16:20:10","slug":"the-smothering-ball-boy-and-the-toe-poking-footballer-the-lessons-to-be-learned","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/?p=7098","title":{"rendered":"The smothering ball-boy and the toe-poking footballer &#8211; the lessons to be learned"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/CHARLIEM0RGAN.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter  wp-image-7099\" title=\"CHARLIEM0RGAN\" src=\"http:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/CHARLIEM0RGAN.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"542\" height=\"80\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The world of football is divided over whether or not the Chelsea international Eden Hazard should have been sent off after the bizarre incident in which he kicked out at a ball-boy who had covered the ball with his body instead of returning it speedily to play. Apologists insist he was trying to kick the ball not the boy; critics are demanding his automatic three-match ban should be extended, as was Eric Cantona\u2019s when he kicked a fan some years back. Cantona was banned for eight months.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u00a0What will perhaps shock the rest of society more is the disclosure that ball-boys routinely cheat by passing their ball quickly to the home team and dallying over assisting their opponents.\u00a0 Indeed the ball-boy in question, one Charlie Morgan, actually boasted of this fact on Twitter ahead of the game.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u00a0That is not all they have learned from their role models on the pitch. The ball-boy at Swansea hammed up the incident with much melodramatic grimacing and rolling on the ground. Perhaps the Football Association should indeed impose an additional punishment on the felicitously-named Mr Hazard; they could require the footballer to pay for some drama lessons to improve the ball-boy\u2019s woeful acting skills.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The world of football is divided over whether or not the Chelsea international Eden Hazard should have been sent off after the bizarre incident in which he kicked out at a ball-boy who had covered the ball with his body instead of returning it speedily to play. Apologists insist he was trying to kick the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[81],"class_list":["post-7098","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-society","tag-football"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7098","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7098"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7098\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7107,"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7098\/revisions\/7107"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7098"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7098"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulvallely.com\/archive\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7098"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}