Chelsea’s Eden Hazard, his team needing to score two goals with less than ten minutes remaining on the clock, was unimpressed with a ballboy’s unwillingness to hand him the ball and get the game restarted.
So with ballboy Charlie Morgan (17yr-old son of one of Swansea’s City Football Club’s directors) lying on the ball like a hen warming an egg, Hazard did what any player would do – try to get it back. Unfortunately for Hazard, he did it with this feet instead of reaching in with his hands and got himself (rightly) sent off.
As is the case with sports, these moments in the middle of long seasons blow up in tea-cup-storm fashion, and the newspapers and twitter have been full of “Ballboy-gate!” speculation and analysis.
So we’ll add our ten cents to the discussion. No, Hazard should not have tried to get the ball back by swinging his foot out, and yes, he should be banned for a couple of games.
But we are glad that Hazard lashed out like he did. The ballboy should have returned the ball immediately – hence his job title, BALL boy – though we’re not suggesting that ballboys that fall below the standard should face corporal punishment from whiny-faced overpaid footballers.
No, instead we’re siding with Hazard because of the look on the kid’s face, and his body language as he rolled on the ground and then as he was escorted around the pitch by Swansea’s medical staff, were the epitome of “whiny-faced teenager” that we once all were. Come on, admit it to yourself, who hasn’t wanted to put in his place some spotty teenager making too much noise in the cinema, or acting an oik in a McDonalds? Who hasn’t wanted to yank the ear-phones from some acne-ridden kid on the bus, or shoulder-barged a 16yr-old while they’re weaving blindly along the pavement too engrossed in the act of texting?
So Eden Hazard, scourge of the ballboy, hero to the repressed middle-aged, you’ll probably be out for at least a couple of weeks. But rest assured, we’ll be thinking of you fondly.
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