Just before the return of Aaron

A football boot must be one of the most-paradoxical things ever invented by man.
Designed and perfected to accomplish the simple but now very sophisticated task of kicking a ball, it is also a very potent weapon of mass injury.
I walked into a Studio 88 outlet in Pretoria, South Africa’s capital city during the week, to glimpse the latest range of soccer boots by Adidas and Nike. The chain outlet, famous for its high-grade sportswear brands, did not disappoint me. There were everything from the Microlite, Adidas Predator and other such intimidating names, with all of them bearing studs ranging from plastic, iron and even blades! For aspiring and established sportsmen and women, there was no shortage of footwear equipment to meet all tastes and needs.
But week in, week out now we see professional sportsmen – footballers especially – employ these same exotic shoes to maim fellow professionals. The latest being the brutal, brutal assault by Manchester City’s Nigel De Jong on Newcastle’s Hatem Ben Arfa that left the latter with a double leg fracture, last Sunday.
Using the boot of course to achieve his despicable objective. Mention must be made that Ben Arfa is already the third broken leg recorded in the premiership so far this season . And we are just seven games old into a 38-game season!
Why has it come to this?
It cannot be competition. It cannot be sport anymore. There is nothing fightingly full of spirit or fair-playing about a situation where a professional player goes out with the sole aim of causing grievous bodily harm to a fellow professional. Only the spirit of evil can be behind such action.
To add insult to injury, De Jong is being defended by his Dutch colleague, Mark Van Bommel, who described him as a “sweet guy”. Well coming from a bruiser like Van Bommel, it’s like the devil himself acknowledging the actions of Adolf Hitler.



The face of violence..De Jong chasing after Cecs Fabregas

Arsenal have consistently been on the receiving end of such barbaric behaviour and as I write this, our own dear Aaron Ramsey is emerging from a traumatic period after being put to bed by Stoke’s Ryan Shawcross. He was our third player in four years to suffer that fate after Abou Diaby’s ankle was broken in a game against Sunderland by Dan Smith in May, 2006 and Eduardo was almost killed by Birmingham’s Martin Taylor in 2008 . Now, thankfully, he will be returning to training in three weeks. The league he left behind nine months ago though seems to have descended into more bone-crunching violence.
Wenger has campaigned long and hard for something more decisive to be done to stop this sort of assaults but the lily-livered FA has done nothing. Just at the start of the season, he described Stoke City as playing rugby rather than football, prompting Tony Pulis & co to lodge a very-petty protest demanding action against Wenger. What a waste of everyone’s time.
Methinks Ian Wright’s suggestion that any player who breaks an opponent’s leg should himself be banned for the period of time the injured player is out of the game, makes all the sense in the world. It’s quite simple and logical. Once you put someone out of the game, you as well stay out yourself.
It ought to make serial-killers such as De Jong think twice. After shaming Dutch football at the World Cup finals by executing that nasty kung-fu kick on Spain’s Xabi Alonso, the thuggish De Jong is clearly not keen on mending his ways.
After that leg break in February 2008, Eduardo never recovered his sharpness in front of goal again. Physical wounds will heal, but the real healing remains psychological and without that, a sportsman is just another lump of flesh. It was sad and heartbreaking watching him struggle in vain at every attempt to rediscover his lost touch and finally, seeing him left behind on the substitute’s bench when it became clear he was not going to be player he was before the injury. His sale to Shakhtar Donetsk in July was the final admission by Wenger and Arsenal that he was permanently damaged.
Fingers crossed, young Aaron will re-emerge as the midfielder of promise we all saw early last season, who was maturing excellently before our eyes.
Fingers crossed, the FA will wake up and save our game from thugs, muggers and yobs pretending to be footballers.
The English premiership is marketed around the world as the best the game has to offer. Doing nothing about the likes of De Jong will ruin all that and reduce it to a place of fear and intimidation.
Surely, not a place for the likes of Aaron to return and flourish.