Poor Form Award Nomination

The Asian Champions League semi-final has seen what must go down as Sporting Sport Opinions first nomination for Bad Sportsmanship or what will otherwise be known as The Poor Form Award.

Before I go into my thoughts of the situation I will explain a long standing unwritten rule in Football.  If a player is injured the team in possession will kick the ball out of play to allow the player to get treatment.  When the time comes for the ball to come back into play the opposing team returns the ball back to the team that kicked it out.  A nice sporting tradition.

So we have a team from South Korea 'Suwon Bluewings' and Qatar's 'Al Sadd'.  Will these two teams ever deserve respect from oppositions again?


In the semi final in question though it did not pan out like this.  Watch the highlights here and you will not believe how it panned out.

Now Suwon were all expecting the tradition of the game to be played out when one of their players was injured but Al Sadd decided to take advantage and throw tradition out the window.  What Al Sadd did is definitely a perfect way to start off the Poor Form nominations.  As bad as this was though the scenes that followed were unbelievable.  Football of this level is not accustomed to such brawls and in this game we see one to rival the Manly vs Melbourne Rugby League brawl. Having seen the highlights before knowing the punishments I was expecting to see some very hefty suspensions handed out. But reports indicate only one match suspensions to four players and a coach and possible further investigations.  When players on and off the field get involved as well as coaches and staff the punishment needs to be harsher. It looks like the NRL judiciary sat in on this one.  When are sporting officials going to get it right?  But with Asian Football having its own member banned for offering bribes and the AFC also facing problems of match fixing and betting scandals maybe the judiciary are on the take as well.