Why the worst crime a player can commit is not cheating or injuring another pro, but rather expressing a point of view?

It seems that, in this industry, it is better to lie, dive and prosper than to be honest and be vilified.
It seems also that football is hell-bent on its most important commodity, the players, knowing their place and not having a voice.
When they do speak, it has to be cliches and sanitised nonsense, which is why so many people are surprised when a player actually has an articulate, intelligent view on any given subject.
There are far more astute footballers out there than people would care to realise or accept. The trouble is, for some reason it suits our purposes to believe players are thick.
And it seems we prefer it to remain that way.
Which is why Clark Carlisle is regarded as Clark Kent, just because he speaks well on a variety of issues and does okay on Countdown.

Arsenal's Theo Walcott knew exactly what he was doing when he admitted to diving the other day against Leeds. He was putting his hands up to something that has been the scourge of football for years and was basically trying to be honest.
And yet he was mullered by fans and pundits - some of whom called for the FA to charge him with cheating, for goodness' sake.

Walcott didn't get anything out of his dive, so he didn't benefit from it. But that wasn't enough for the critics, who demanded he was hung, drawn and quartered.

And yet 24 hours later, Dimitar Berbatov, who went down in instalments under challenge from Danny Agger, insisted afterwards: "It wasn't a dive. I'm not like that."
And that was seemingly that.

What's more, ITV slammed Berbatov for going down too easily and yet still awarded him the Man of the Match award at the end of the game. Go figure.

The dysfunctional family of football likes what it knows. It can cope with that.
Anything else and it gets its knickers in a twist.
Which is why there has been such a furore over Twitter.

Ryan Babel retweeted a quite funny mocked-up picture of referee Howard Webb in a United shirt after feeling aggrieved at the penalty decision that cost Liverpool their place in the FA Cup.
The howls of protest and condemnation went on long into Sunday night with, again, fans and pundits calling for Babel to be gutted like a fish.
And yet what had he really done wrong? Was what he did worse than Neil Warnock calling El Hadji Diouf a 'sewer rat' in a post match interview?
Was it worse than Clint Hill appearing to threaten Diouf by saying in a tweet: "That c*** will get what's coming to him"?
Or keeper Paddy Kenny tweeting: "That **** Diouf will get it one day"?
You know and I know that Diouf was bang out of order with his treatment of Jamie Mackie, who had broken his leg in QPR's FA Cup defeat to Blackburn last weekend.
But there was something far more sinister about the thoughts committed to Twitter by the Rangers players than about anything Babel had done.

And just on Babel, why have the FA charged him for what he has tweeted but not Manchester United's Darren Fletcher, who chased and pushed Webb in the game between United and Arsenal last month?
The reason? Because football seems not to want players to have a point of view.

Pundits have them, presenters have them, fans have them, Uncle Tom Cobley can have them. But the most important people in the game, the players, don't. Or can't. And that cannot be the case.

What would you, as a fan, rather have - dull pronouncements on the pass for the goal and how any given player just wants to take one game at a time? Comments put through the PR department that emerge as pure as the driven snow? Or anger, frustration and alternative views within the boundaries of what is acceptable?

Let me be more succinct

Berba is known to dive. Yes he was booked before for diving.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/...shois-yard.html

So IMO he is  a serial diver. I have posted that in MU thread and have been warned that action will be taken against me if I say anymore negative things about MU players in their thread 

Anyways most of us (non MU fans) agree that it shouldn't have been a penalty. That includes Liverpool players who are first account witnesses!

My point is that why and that of BABEL (our main protagonist in this thread) too  does MU always get the rub of the green i.e. Howard Webb apparently and without hesitation always give MU the ADVANTAGE (in this case a penalty & a Goal as a result) ?
And especially at OT. No?

On the contrary, shouting that gf comment in public may lead to defamation unless it is VERY clear that it is a joke, (ie the gf was there when it was shouted and laughed etc), since it is a public place and a place where peopl who know the bf and the gf would appear, and that statement would give these friends or public a negative impression of the person defamed and her status in eyes of friends and society would be tarnished and hence suffered damage to her reputation.

Anyway back to Babel's case, its really a tough situation not just with the FA but with alot of other bodies, ie this social media phenomena. It cannot be denied that the social media reaches out to so much more audience - tens of thousands to millions of readers - and the impact can be disastrous if not handled well. The FA have their disciplinary board and rules and one of it is nothing disrespectful or diminishing the image of the referees / FAs should be published in public. One of the factors considered (rightfully or wrongfully) would have been the need to prevent mass flooding of similar messages by others. So sadly Ryan was made a scapegoat in that sense. But on the other hand if nothing was done, and that act is deemed condoned, imagine how many such tweets will appear on players or manager's blog on a weekly or even daily basis. Imagine the pressure on the referees whose faces are on blogs everywhere with not-so-well-received comments and how can they even stand out to the pitch that weekend to officiate a match?

my 2 cents

yes yes he is a serial diver. is that what u want the posters here to say? thats why you create this thread, instead of discussing FA's inconsistent with their decision, including the Babel incident and even Diouf's issue with QPR?

yes he is a serial diver then. End of story on that. Can we go back on the discussion of FA's issue now? 

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Added on January 14, 2011, 4:07 pmFairness & Justice dicatates that not only should I & every football fans should support the exoneration of Babel from the FA charge but  that Babel & his fellow footballers should have the freedom to express their POVs.

Drogba, Ronaldo, Nani , Iniesta, Gerrard, Chamakh are serial divers. Berba is not. TS managed to dig what, one evidence so how does that make it serial? The fact that the peno last week has plenty of opinions split says it all really. It was not as clear cut as it's supposedly is.

hahaha i appreciate what TS try to discuss...but in the end he was so bias with his own thought...

Whether berba dive or not is already a past what we want to discuss here as you had decided to open this thread is about the comment from the player itself...

On the contrary, shouting that gf comment in public may lead to defamation unless it is VERY clear that it is a joke, (ie the gf was there when it was shouted and laughed etc), since it is a public place and a place where peopl who know the bf and the gf would appear, and that statement would give these friends or public a negative impression of the person defamed and her status in eyes of friends and society would be tarnished and hence suffered damage to her reputation.

Anyway back to Babel's case, its really a tough situation not just with the FA but with alot of other bodies, ie this social media phenomena. It cannot be denied that the social media reaches out to so much more audience - tens of thousands to millions of readers - and the impact can be disastrous if not handled well. The FA have their disciplinary board and rules and one of it is nothing disrespectful or diminishing the image of the referees / FAs should be published in public. One of the factors considered (rightfully or wrongfully) would have been the need to prevent mass flooding of similar messages by others. So sadly Ryan was made a scapegoat in that sense. But on the other hand if nothing was done, and that act is deemed condoned, imagine how many such tweets will appear on players or manager's blog on a weekly or even daily basis. Imagine the pressure on the referees whose faces are on blogs everywhere with not-so-well-received comments and how can they even stand out to the pitch that weekend to officiate a match?

my 2 cents

Nvm, let TS get what he wants to hear, then we can continue discussing the issue here.