Two ways to win
We're lucky, as football supporters, that we have two ways to win: the goal, or the tackle that stops the goal, are equally valuable to our weekend.
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I was a bit bemused by the reaction to Gabriel Gudmundsson's foul on Andrey Santos last weekend. From the stands, it looked like a trip. In the referee's view, it was worth a yellow card. Gabriel, and Leeds fans, disagreed with him on that. Then we all moved on, in real life.
The not so real life response was to drag this incident around for a few days longer, discussing and debating whether Gudmundsson should have been sent off. And while I know ours is an age of dissonance, it's not common that I have to rewind for the replays to understand even a part of what people are actually on about.
I'm still not clear. Gudmundsson is going for a trip, to keep Santos and co in the corner, and because he's late his studs come down on Santos' ankle, but because he was only going for a trip there's no damage done. Santos did, incidentally, get treatment, but I suspect this was the moment's true cynicism: players don't have to leave the pitch with physios if their fouler has been carded, so once Gudmundsson saw yellow, it became a free tactical timeout of the sort goalies can't pull off anymore. I'd argue there was more gamesmanship in that than in Gudmundsson's foul, about which a yellow card was maybe fine for the mistiming, but no more.
Given all the post-match attention on it, though, I did raise an eyebrow when Leeds United's official Instagram account went with a clip of Ao Tanaka's second half tackle that sent Amad Diallo flying in, admittedly, a very satisfactory way. This was the one, not Gudmundsson's trip, that had me cringing in the stadium, waiting for the referee to come back with a yellow card, red card, birthday, Christmas and Hallowe'en cards too. Was it wise to draw more attention to this one, just when everyone had been calmed down about Gudmundsson?
It was a good strong tackle but it was close to a bad foul, which good strong tackles often are. It's hard to argue it was well controlled because Tanaka had panicked himself by waiting leisurely for a pass to his feet, and leapt to action — and through Diallo — to get the ball first. I'll trust Tanaka and say it was judgement more than luck that he got the ball and Diallo got up in one piece.
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