Well UEFA finally ruled on Chelsea‘s behavior after the Champions League semi-final against Barcelona and I am surprised at how lenient the bans are.
The media is portraying UEFA’s ruling to hand lengthy European bans to Didier Drogba and Jose Bosingwa as harsh. I disagree.
Drogba was given a six-match ban, but since the last two games are suspended for two years making this a four game ban for his foul-mouthed confrontation with referee Tom Henning Ovrebo at the end of their Champions League semi-final defeat by Barcelona in May.
Chelsea full-back Jose Bosingwa got a four-match ban – with one game suspended for two years, making thisa three game ban for labeling Ovrebo a “thief” after the game.
The day after the semi-final I wrote that Chelsea have to face UEFA’s Wrath over their conduct. UEFA’s showed that their campaign for respect for referees is a PR move only.
If UEFA President Michel Platini was serious about making sure that referees were respected he would have given Drogba and Bosingwa more than 4 and 3 game bans respectively.
Also, what happened to Michael Ballack? Ballack if you remember became incensed that a penalty was not given in extra time and aggressively chased the referee on the pitch and TV replays seemed to indicate that Ballack bumped the referee. Did he get off scot-free here?
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backtrack a second, there’s talk of the punishments to Bosingwa and Drogba being too short but you have to go back to the rootcause: the refereeing that favoured Barca set the stage for all this to take place
I do not like Chelsea at all but with all due respect, the game between Chelsea and Barcelona featured refereeing that clearly went against Chelsea. May be the suspension should have been for a few games longer, but not too much longer because although Drogba and co. were clearly in violation of the rules, it is imperative to understand the sheer magnitude of the game especially considering the fact that Chelsea could easily have won if one of many other top-class referees were appointed. I’m sure that when the UEFA administrators were making the decision of how many games to ban Bosingwa and Drogba from, they carefully reviewed all the calls that Chelsea were complaining about and although they must have been angry at the Chelsea’s treatment of Referee Ovrebo , they must have seen that the refereeing was clearly against Chelsea in the match. May be he didn’t mean to favour Barca (I sure hope he didn’t because if he did, he should never be allowed to referee again) but he did end up favouring them which turned out to be the difference in the game .. a lot of people will long point to the refereeing as just a big a factor as the Iniesta blast that put Chelsea out of the competition … As for Ballack, his incident was probably chalked up to ‘the heat of the moment’ and he may just have made incidental, not deliberate contact with the referee. If Drogba and Bosingwa were incensed at the refereeing, they still only gave Ovrebo a tounge-lashing .. Ovrebo received multiple death threats from Chelsea fanatics after the game and had to be smuggled out of England .