Controversy of the week

Just a small post on the big story in football at the moment, on Wednesday night a pretty standard league cup tie between Chelsea and Swansea dived into controversy as Chelsea's Eden Hazard seemed to kick a ball boy and was subsequently red carded. There has been much debate over the incident and a lot of terrible articles in papers such as the daily mail (one of my most hated papers, I advise anyone not to read it's awfully biased and unintelligently proposed 'news' stories), in my view both parties are at fault. First; Hazard is a professional and a role model to young footballers, so his reaction and the kick was wrong on his part, however, the ball boy Charlie Morgan is also no angel, he actively wasted time by lying on the ball something which is neither his job or advisable in any situation and any player with an ounce of passion would want to get the ball back as quickly as possible in the circumstances. Hazard and the boy should face punishment, but the fact that hours earlier Morgan tweeted that he was going to waste time just adds fuel to the fire, in my opinion he should be banned from being the ball boy and probably more, however, as the son of one of the directors at Swansea football club (yes, the plot thickens) he probably will get away unscathed except for the ridiculous amount of mentions on his twitter and the internet hate he will most likely receive from a number of twitter users for his pathetic attempt to make the injury look a lot worse than it really was..

It was however, very refreshing to see many a professional footballer come out publicly in defence of Hazard. It's nice to see a bit of empathy once in a while and the likes of Michael Owen and Luke Shaw, the current left back at Southampton, understand that Hazard simply just wanted the ball as one particular camera angle clearly shows. 

This event may not seem to be too significant on the world of football, but it could see the end of ball boys all together which would be a great shame. I think it would be a wise decision to cap the age of ball boys to around 14, to stop this kind of incident and in the hope that those less privileged than Morgan get the opportunity be in his position. Finally, both player and ball boy have apologised to each other and shaken hands, and football may swiftly move on.