By Tony Attwood
My apologies if you have found a long period in which this site was unavailable. We still don’t have everything resolved but believe me we are working on it. At least you can read this!
Currently on the internet there are lots of articles that mention the “dark arts” of football, but many of these just use the phrase without any real explanation of what it means. And that can be dangerous with any phrase in any context, and this for two reasons.
First there doesn’t seem to be an absolute agreement as to what the “dark arts” in football actually are. Are they illegal activities that the referees tend not to notice, or are they legal football moves which are not really in the spirit of the game? Or maybe something else!
One definition says: In football, the term “dark arts” refers to strategies that exploit the mental and emotional aspects of the game. This includes diving, time-wasting, simulation, provoking opponents, tactical fouls, and manipulating referees.”
There is even a book on the subject (although I have to admit I have not read it all) called “Football Dark Arts” and it particularly notes that, “Football is a contact sport, where players jostle for space, position and opportunity. As such, physical duels occur between players and this article is about these dark arts that can disadvantage your opponents.”
Now the point is also made in the book that players, clubs and supporters all have histories – and these might include rivalries between two players that can be picked up from the start of a game just by following a set of incidents in a previous match. If the referee is aware of such situations, or indeed notices them from the very start he can warn both players that he has recognized what is going on, and tell the plyers (or even managers) that actions between the two, which if seen in isolation might go unpunished, could now be dealt with for the simple reason that they are becoming cumulative.
Generally speaking these activities come under the term of “misconduct” which is a sort of catch-all term for going beyond the rules in some way that is not specified in the rule book, either simply by being abusive, or perhaps with the intent of winding the opposition player up, either to push him towards foul play or put him totally off his game.
One of the problems here is that among some professional footballers there is a feeling that referees are there to be tricked or manipulated in the same way that some school pupils in secondary schools feel that teachers (whose discipline is thought to be not as strict as others), can be disrupted in their teaching.
This can be as childish as a player from one team using an abusive nickname for a player in the opposition, when the two are close together. Another approach might involve pinching a player while apparently helping him off the ground following a tackle. “He called me a name” or “he pinched me” can sound a bit feeble on a pitch.
But such activities along with verbal abuse (including racist abuse) are engaged in, in order to wind up an opposition players and put him off his game – or indeed make him retaliate, which of course can be seen by the referee, while the original racist or other abuse is probably not heard. Such behaviour comes under the general heading of “misconduct” and will of course lead to the player who is booked for misconduct to protest that he has done nothing.
There is also the offence of unsporting behaviour, which is something that can arise where a player feels that an opponent is about to take a free kick from the wrong place, and so kicks the ball back a few yards to where he thinks the original offence took place.
This can be a dangerous thing to do, because the player about the take the free kick might then protest to the referee, who indeed may not have noted exactly where the original offence took place. The players seen kicking the ball away could then be punished for stopping the taking of the free kick, while the player who has moved the ball on might well not get any punishment.
Out of all this comes rumour, and from that comes “accepted views” – such as the view that Arsenal cheat and fool the referee through this cheating. Evidence is not needed – it just becomes an accepted view through repetition.
This view is aided by the fact that Arsenal have developed the habit of settling into a deep lying pattern of defence if they have gone one up against a team that has a noted forward line. There is nothing wrong with this approach and Arsenal certainly don’t use it all the time, but when they do it can infuriate the opposition. That is not Arsenal’s fault, but it can lead to more aggressive behaviour from the other side and more fouls.
Commentators then react in various ways using phrases such as “That’s embarrassing,” for an incident in which absolutely no one was embarrassed at all, while also occasionally telling the referee that a certain player should have been booked or sent off for a particular incident. The implication here is that the commentator knows what’s what while the referee doesn’t.
Thus the phrase “that’s embarrassing” becomes utterly meaningless because the ref has done what he thinks is right and the player feels he has behaved in a way that helps his team. The person who should feel embarrassed is the commentator.
Of course there is cheating, but cheats are generally not embarrassed; for them it is part of their technique, as is their protesting.
The reality is that players push the laws of the game to the limit and beyond. Referees see some infringements and not others. Fans are of course biased. Some clubs cheat more than others. What else is there to know?
Well, there is one more thing, as somehow some fans expect mistakes to be evened up by the ref. He doesn’t penalise x from the home team but does penalised y from the away team. Is that bias?
Probably not – he may just have seen one but not the other, although of course he might have been trying to use a second error to make up for the first error. He shouldn’t but well, sometimes it seems to go like that.
The big problem is that we don’t really have a good counter of wrong decisions at each game. PGMO won’t allow such a thing as it would show just how much referees get wrong, and reporters don’t do it because they feel it would leave them open to accusations of bias. So on we go.
But there is a problem: reputation. Arsenal now seem to have a reputation for cheating, but no one that I have read has produced a serious set of stats showing that Arsenal have committed more fouls that have not been called by the refs than others. Or indeed have suffered more fouls that have not been called. What most of us seem to do is notice some fouls and not others.
Of course commentators could help by keeping track and reporting live on air which team is benefitting from ref errors as the game goes on. They don’t, and I suspect that is because to do so would lose them half their audience. So we are where we are and unless we want every tackle in each game to be reviewed, it is where we will stay.
