Thursday, July 20, 2006

Did he expect his opponent to say something nice?

I don't know how I feel about this...now that the French player Zidane has been fined and suspended, FIFA officials are now going after Materazzi for "Egging" him on? Part of the sport is the verbal chatter aka heckling...where else would we get fun phrases like "Your Mama"... Zidane could not have expected him to say something like "Wow for a French guy you play great! I hope you win too!" Not that verbal insults are anything I would ever participate in while playing any sport, but part of sportsmanship is learning how to play under pressure and I am not sure how I feel about citizenship (verbal provocations) in sports being as important to police...whereas there is a huge distinction between physical provocations that are clearly not part of the sport. It's just the same as basbeball players who get heckled can't go attack the drunk people in the stands for calling them names...you escort the losers from the stands for being drunk but not heckling.

1 comment:

Lone Ranger said...

Europe is so politically correct that the next thing you know, they'll stop keeping score -- not that it would matter.