Rotational fouling must be stopped now – it’s institutionalised bullying
I am not sure which of the various epithets most adequately captures the phenomenon. Rotational fouling, perhaps? Take-it-in-turns fouling? Gyratory fouling? Whatever we call it, one thing is clear: football has to get on top of this scourge.
Wilfried Zaha has particular reason to have a gripe about this depressing problem. In Crystal Palace’s game against Sheffield United on Saturday, it was like that scene out of Airplane where the stewards line up one by one to give the panicking passenger a good, hard slap.
Sander Berge was the first to step on to the carousel, fouling Zaha in the third minute. A little later, George Baldock stepped up to the plate, fouling Zaha once more. He did so again in the 18th minute (pulling Zaha back, for which he received a yellow card) and in the 34th minute, with studs planted on his foot. By now you would have hoped that Andrew Madley, the referee, was cottoning on to Baldock’s serial offending, so United rotated.
A little before half-time, Chris Basham fouled Zaha, then in the 68th minute it was John Fleck, then in the 77th minute John Egan and in the 90th John Lundstram. The only surprise is that Zaha didn’t get a boot to the ankle from Chris Wilder, the United manager, as well as his kit man and assistant physio as he walked off at full time. Wasn’t that in the game plan too?
Some will say that it has always been thus. I remember a wizened Manchester United fan telling me that he had watched a game where George Best was fouled by all ten opposition outfield players over the course of 90 minutes, a doubtless apocryphal tale but one that captures something about the heritage of rotational fouling. It certainly isn’t a modern contrivance.
The difference today, though, is the level of premeditation, the way it is orchestrated with such Machiavellian precision. Troy Deeney, the Watford striker, let the cat out of the bag, perhaps unintentionally, when he said: “You take it in turns kicking Zaha. I know no one wants to hear that, but you go, ‘You hit this time, you hit him the next time.’ You don’t have the same player tackle him because you know you’re going to get booked.”
This interview, incidentally, was given in 2018 and barely raised a whimper, perhaps the most eloquent indication of how deeply rotational fouling has become entrenched within modern football. The pundits call it “professional”. They call it “clever”. It is, to my mind, none of these things. A more adequate term is cheating.
Zaha, for his part, is seething. It is clear that these tactics are not merely influencing the outcome of games, but endangering his physical longevity as a player. “I know that for a fact [opponents are out there to hurt me] but I just don’t know what to do any more,” Zaha said after a game last season. “I end up arguing with referees because today the guy studded me in my shin — do they need to break my leg before anyone gets a red card?”
I know that Zaha isn’t perfect, and his tendency to whine at referees has been widely condemned, but can you really blame him? It is like the victim of a weekly burglary complaining to an apathetic police force. On the past five occasions that a player has been fouled at least eight times in a single Premier League game, Zaha has been on the receiving end three times. These included matches against Tottenham Hotspur and Manchester United; on the latter occasion, he was fouled an extraordinary ten times.
This is why it is surely time for a new directive, providing referees with the retributive tools to get on top of this menace. Take Crystal Palace’s game against Watford in December, where players kicked Zaha for 90 minutes, a clear and obvious attempt to neutralise a talented player, but where the challenges were deployed outside the box (to avoid conceding a penalty) and where the rotational logic ensured that no single player risked a sending-off.
The solution isn’t difficult to glimpse. At present, an offender can be given a yellow card for cumulative fouling. That’s to say, there is a well-established norm that if a player commits three fouls, each one of which is below the threshold for a yellow, the aggregate effect can be sufficient for a caution to be given anyway. You often see referees pointing to the different places on the pitch that these cumulative offences were enacted as they brandish the card.
Isn’t it time to extend this logic to victims, too? The moment a single player is fouled twice in a game, the referee should significantly lower the threshold for subsequent fouls on that specific player. That would ensure that the next time an opposition player tried to bring him down, they would receive a yellow card, with the next offender receiving a red. This would end, or at least mitigate, individuals being repeatedly fouled throughout a game.
This isn’t just about Zaha, of course, but the many others who have been victimised, such as Adama Traoré, of Wolverhampton Wanderers, who was hacked down by three different Tottenham players over 15 second-half minutes in a Premier League match in December. Three yellow cards were shown for these offences (no red card, of course) and Spurs went on to win 2-1. The previous week, Brighton & Hove Albion offered the same “tactic”, with three different players booked for fouls on Traoré.
I could go on. For the point is that this form of institutionalised bullying has become endemic in the game, rarely commented upon, let alone condemned. This is not just an indictment of football, but its docile administrators. It is time for rotational fouling to end, once and for all.
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