Re: Serie A Thread - 2010/11 Season
me acting biased? me trying to defend gattuso? wow, i didn't expect that! Sina i'm inclined to believe u read my posts in a hurry.... infact, reading what u wrote, i'm almost sure of it. however maybe it was me not expressing my point properly, so let me try again.
i am not defending gattuso (like u say). infact if u read again what i wrote in my very last post, u'll notice statements like
".....gattuso's behaviour was absolutely unacceptable, regardless the circumstances or the possible provocation....." or
".....gattuso's punishment sounds pretty fair to me...."
i don't think i left much room for interpretations or misunderstandings there, did i?
also another thing i don't quite understand is why u insist so much on making this some sort ot a racist thing. leaving aside the quite obvious fact that spending a few years in a country doesn't necessarily implies u can't "not like" italy or italians (mate are u seriously suggesting that he can't have said that just because he's played in italy for a few seasons 30 years ago??? i'm sorry mate, but this is quite a silly and very weak argument).
and anyway, that's not even important, because that's not even a racist-related thing. according to gattuso jordan called him a "fucking bastard italian". now mate, if u think the offensive part of this statement is "italian", then there's something wrong with u".
Gerd, if i were to call u "fucking basterd belgian", would u be mad at me coz i called u "belgian"??? i don't think so.... as a matter of fact u are a belgian, and last time i checked "belgian" was not an insult.....just like "italian". but i assume u wouldn't like to be called "fucking bastard".
i'm fairly sure gattuso got mad coz that prick called him a "fucking bastard"... and i don't think the "italian" part of the phrase hurted him at all
and the race aspect pops out again when u say that "the italian in me feels insulted by that and pushes me to twist facts in order to defend gattuso". i already proved i'm not defending gattuso, so i not gonna repeat myself.
but why would i feel insulted anyway? because a 60 years old man i never met in my life insulted a 30 years old man i never met in my life? that's odd!
u think i would feel insulted coz jordan said "fucking italian bastard"? jordan didn't insult me... and he didn't insult the entire italian population of course. he only insulted gattuso, who just happens to be italian.... he could have said "u bastard midget" , or "bastard bearded man"...... and yet that shouldn't make any short people or bearded man feel insulted.
besides, even if racism were somehow involved in this incident (wich is not the case), do u really believe i would feel the urge to defend a guy i don't even know, a football player who doesn't even play for my team, a person i've only seen in tv...... just because he was born the same country i was and speaks the same language i do?
i gotta be honest sina, i don't find anything insulting in jordan's words.... but what u wrote, on the other side, isn't exactly nice.
but the weirdest thing in your post is when u say "u weren't there, therefore u can't tell what happened". this makes absolutely no sense at all. there's a fil rouge wich unites pretty much every culture ever existed on the face of the earth; the judging process. humans have different gods, different laws, different habits, but they all have one thing in common. their judging process is based on
the reconstruction of facts by an individual who didn't personally witness the event itself. u may call them judges or shamans, or reigious authorities.... this is what they do. and since we have to reconstruct an event we didn't see with our own eyes, we rely on evidences, testimonies and our personal logic.
and this Sina is exactly what
BOTH OF US are doing right now. u're saying i wasn't there so i can't assume a position..... but u're doing exactly the same thing. u
're not being neutral, as there's no such thing as assuming a neutral position here.
u either believe gattuso reacted to a provocation.... or u don't. i'm inclined to believe gattuso is telling the truth, while u're inclined to believe he isn't and redknapp is telling the truth..... both of us have no evidences supporting our arguments, and
both of us are taking a position, so u can't tell me "u weren't there"...... coz i could very well say the exact same thing to u.
so, like i said, it's about evidences, testimonies and the logic process. now logic process alone won't get u far in a court, unless u sustain it with some evidences or witnesses...... but that's not how FIFA and UEFA work. the zidane-materazzi incident is the most classic example. there were absolutely no evidences materazzi insulted zidane... some lips-readers tried to figure out what materazzi told zidane, but they failed miserably. yet fifa still came to the conclusion that materazzi did provocate zidane, based on mere logic. quite simply there were 2 options:
1 - zidane suddenly had a schizophrenic episode and attacked materazzi.
2 - materazzi said something to stimulate zidane's reaction.
and based on that logic argument ALONE they made up their mind and punished materazzi for something they couldn't prove.
was that the right thing to do? hell yeah! in a court such a decision would be laughable, but football federations don't have the same disciplinary power a judge has (they don't put people in jail) so they can afford to bend some rules and rely on logic assumption alone.
and let's be honest, that's what we all did. we weren't there either, yet we all assumed materazzi tried to provocate zidane's reaction. and we based our assumption on a very basic logic process; that was much more believable than thinking zidane went berserk for no reason.
and that's exactly what we are doing right now. we both weren't there, yet we both made up our mind about what happened.
when fifa punished materazzi, they established a policy, a strategy, they drew a line. they pretty much told us that whenever there's an argument or a fight or a feud on the pitch, they act like a mother when his 2 sons are fighting: she just twists both his sons arms and punish em both, no matter who started it.
and that's fine.
but u gotta show some consistancy. u can't apply different criteria to similar situations. once u establish a method in judging a specific situation, u got to stick to that method.
and this is not trying to defend gattuso because is italian. i'm not doing that. neither i'm turning this into a racial incident (wich is what u seemed to imply). i'm applying logic. i'm arguing my point with a simple objective criterium. u can't use 2 different standards to judge 2 similar situations. and i don't think u can say i'm twisting facts here, as my point is reasonable and pretty much undebeatable.
PLF said:
The fact that he was SO on the EDGE ever since the start though just tells you about his maturity. Being passionate is one thing, being a 33 year old who's been through it all but can't control his emotions at all, is another and is a weakness.
i also disagree on that mate. there are certainly no excuses for gattuso's behaviour, and like i said before, the fact that he was wearing the captain's armband makes it even worse........... but
there's not a person in the world who can always be in control of his emotions. and it's not a matter of being passionate or mature or old. u can be as balanced as a human being can be.... u can be a mature 30 or 40 or 50 years old man.... we all crack under the stress sometimes. and when that happens we might do things we wouldn't do in normal situations.
we all have "a bad day" sometimes... it could be a work related problem or an argument with our girl or with a friend... and we all tend to be more "fired up" and touchy when we're in a bad mood. that happens to everybody... 15 years old teenagers and 70 years old grandpas. and when u mix that with the adrenaline that comes with a football match, that can make things even worse, as in that context, even the silliest most irrilevant thing can bring us to make a complete asshole of ourselves. ihave to admit it happened to me aswell (even though i consider myself a pretty balanced man).
afterall we've seen this sort of scenes before. i remeber mihajlovic a few years ago, back when he was inter coach assistant (what a coincidence) did the same thing with ibra (who was playing with juve those days). it was an inter juve match and from the sidelines mihajlovic picked on ibra right until ibra had enough and attacked him. i also remember materazzi doing the very same thing last season with some other player i can't remember. marco was on the bench and kept insulting an opponent's defender right until the whole thing blew up in a fight.
i'm not trying to justify rino AT ALL. i'm just saying, as unacceptable as his behaviuour was, this is not something that would make me lose respect for a person... he's human, like us all.... and like us all, when in a bad mood he might do stupid things he wouldn't do in normal conditions.
i would certainly lose respect for him if, once back in control of his emotions, he wouldn't apologise, but that was not the case this time.
what i saw the other week was a player who was way too nervous ever since the beginning of the match (like u correctly remarked). then at the end of the game, he was shaking hands with his opponents, right until he met jordan again.
now we might believe rino went berserk for no reason at all and suddenly decided to vent his anger at jordan. that is a possibility, sure.... although it doesn't make much sense to me.
if he just had to give vent to his nerves, there were lots of opponents on the pitch to choose from, guys like him.
u don't assault a man who is twice your age, a man who could be your father... an assistant coach who is quietly staying on the sideline.... u don't do that unless he gave u a reason.
this is how i see it. now i might be wrong, of course. i wasn't there (just like u) so i can't say beyond any doubt that's what happened (although u got to admit it makes much more sense).so let's just agree to disagree on this. we have different opinions on what happened, and that's absolutely fine.
but please mate, don't dismiss me, saying my opinion is motivated by the fact gattuso is italian. that is a cheap shot. i argued my point with objective and logic arguments..... and besides, u should know me better than this.
i'm not
defending gattuso... neither i'm
making a criminal out of jordan, like u said. i'm simply remarking how the federation has addressed this incident with criteria wich are different from the ones they applied to similar incidents.... and this seems a pretty much unquestionable point to me.
