Swansea ballteen deserves a kick in the proverbial’s (Video)
“He could’ve killed him!” Twitter joked on Wednesday night. “He deserves an eight-game ban” many proclaimed. “That’s a disgrace” many shouted through the internet when it came to light that Chelsea winger Eden Hazard had effectively ‘Eric Cantona’d’ Swansea City ballboy Charlie Morgan during the Capital One Cup semi-final encounter between the two sides.
I say boy; Morgan is 17 years of age – he hasn’t been a boy for close to five years now. With the Blues looking to rally late on to half the two goal deficit between themselves and the Swans, the teenager decided the dive on the ball when Chelsea had a throw in deep inside Swansea territory and refused to hand it back to Hazard.
Cue the Belgian “kicking” the lad five – yes five – years his junior as he looked to speed up play for Gerhard Tremmel to take his goal kick. Of course, this all came after Morgan himself had tweeted before the game “The king of ball boys is back making his final appearances #needed #for #timewasting”.
Whether he foresaw a Belgium international bizarrely attempt to murder him in front of 20,000 odd witnesses remains to be seen, but he insinuated to his followers – which have now spiked to well over the 80,000 mark; more so than the official Swansea Twitter account – that he would waste time given the opportunity.
Now, I’m not condoning Hazard’s kick on him; far from it in fact. But, there are surely mountains being made out of molehills on this one. Morgan is hardly a 10-year-old boy, making his first appearance as a ballboy – he’s a 17-year-old for heavens sake.
There are footballers all across the planet his age, or even younger, that are being kicked by peers older than that of Hazard. If an Oldham Athletic player were to kick Liverpool winger Raheem Sterling, a teenager of similar age to that of the ballboy, on Sunday, is the world of social media going to get its knickers in a twist once again? I doubt it.
As he lay there clutching his rib like a young Luis Suarez, Twitter simply imploded with calls for Hazard to be banned for a similar amount of time as Cantona was in 1995 for kung-fu kicking a Crystal Palace – imagine if the social networking site had been around back then? Many would’ve been welcomed with the sight of the birds carrying the whale.
While reports of the police becoming involved were instantaneously dumbfounded, and rightfully so, it’s interesting that the club have moved swiftly to sweep all of this under the carpet, what with Morgan being the son of Swansea director David Morgan, whose hotel chain is owned by the family that, ironically, Chelsea stayed in for the encounter.
Either way, as #ballboygate continues to perplexingly rumble on, the main story of the night is being cruelly overlooked – a Capital One Cup final between Swansea and Bradford City; a feat that could only be trumped if Wrexham were to reach Wembley in the foreseeable future.
With both Morgan and Hazard apologising to one another following the final whistle, the incident itself was summed up expertly by Rafa Benitez following full time: “the ballboy incident is reflective of a fame driven ‘Big Brother society’.”
Frankly, I couldn’t have put it better myself.
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