I titled a post a few days ago “What sort of league is this?”, today the league office answered that. They are a league that wants to protect it’s players.
The league delivered a message today when it handed Mullan a 10 game ban and a $5000 fine. Playing the player rather than the ball is unacceptable, keep the game clean.
The 10 game suspension matches the ban given to Ricardo Clark for his stomp of FC Dallas’ Carlos Ruiz in 2007. At the time the Don said “In taking this action, Major League Soccer is sending a signal that it will not accept reckless and dangerous behavior on its fields,”
Well here we are four seasons later and this time it was for an on-the-ball incident rather than after play was blown dead. Zakuani never saw the reckless tackle coming and certainly did nothing to provoke it (as some agued Ruiz did).
The league has sent a message that players need to be protected from violent tackles. It’s something that has no place in the game, the league does not want players to take out frustrations in this way and the punishment is substantial enough to hopefully make players think twice before in the future.
As has been stated Mullan is a hard player, but not a dirty one. He was last Friday night, and is going to pay for the choice he made. Watching the game and then the replay while I don’t believe he meant to hurt Zakuani, I do think he wanted to send a message.
The league office stated, “Mullan’s tackle is the type of play we need to eliminate from our game and the level of discipline is consistent with our efforts to do so.”
“In making this decision, the Committee took several factors into account: the timing of the challenge, the location on the field, the moments immediately before the challenge where it is clear that Mullan is frustrated and the severity of Zakuani’s injury.”
Now it’s time to move on, the league has made it’s statement, Mullan has accepted his punishment. He will be back for the Colorado visit to Seattle in July. It would say a lot of his character if her were to face what would be a very hostile crowd.
3 Comments
This is a league that has made a stand against reckless tackles, there are opinions all over the net, and what you have to say makes a good argument for a longer ban and fine.
Thank you for this, your thoughts on the Mullan/Zakuani have been clear and your reasoning has been clear. Great writing and I’m subscribing to your feed.
I do hope the league is serious, that reckless tackles will be met with a sending off and so on. What happened to Zacuani was horrible and the tackle was retaliation. That;s what there is no place for, thanks Dave