Monica Seles, 20 years ago

On April 30, 1993, Monica Seles was stabbed by a German "fan" during a quarterfinal match in Hamburg. She survived and recovered, but would never be world's #1 again, or the same person. I was 12 that year, and an avid tennis player, so I remember it with particular vividness.

It was also the first episode of sports violence that I truly witnessed and understood with the semi-maturity of adolescence, so it has remained clearly imprinted on my memory. And I certainly cannot deny that, as many youngsters back then, I had a crush on the beautiful and talented Yugoslav.

Here is an excellent feature story by ESPN writer Melissa Isaacson. And here is the video of Monica's stabbing as shown on live TV; it is graphic.

A lesson in football and bad refereeing: Bayern 4-0 Barcelona

Bayern's win was amply deserved because they shut down Barcelona. That is not to say that Barca didn't try: they held the ball for 66% of the game. But with aggressive marking and perfect movement without ball Bayern dried off Xavi and Iniesta. This, coupled with Messi being obviously out of shape and not ready for this level of football after the injury, caused Barca to lose their creativity. Tiki-taka only works when your pawns are in top shape and the opponent's defenders are less than stellar, and neither was the case tonight.

Bayern, instead, made the best of their relatively scarce ball possession. 14 attempts for Bayern versus 3 for Barca, 9-2 attempts on goal, and 11-4 corners. And, of course, four goals. What's not reflected in the stats is their coolness in shutting down every single dangerous Barcelona attack. Clean recoveries, blazing fast counters, and very little risk. By all means this is Heynckes's tactical masterpiece, greatly executed.

With that said, the 4-0 score is deceptive. At least two of Bayern's goals were illegal, and not just in a "eh that's debatable" way. Gomez was offside by at least two feet (about half a meter) for his 2-0 tap-in. The goal line judge was in a perfect position to see it, as evidenced by TV replays, but instead he just turns to the line judge, who should also have seen it clear as day despite being 60 feet away, and didn't. I struggle to think how such a mistake could be made by trained professionals, though of course human error is a part of the game... but, man, what an error that was! Look, you can even see it obviously from this, which is shot from the worst possible angle from which to judge offside positions...

Similarly, Robben's 3-0 strike is vitiated by Muller's illegal block on Jordi Alba, who was about to tackle Robben from behind. From both the referee's and the line judge's viewpoints it may have seemed like a legal shoulder-to-shoulder charge, but at least the goal line judge must have seen that Muller's shoulder slammed on Jordi's chest, knocking him down; and we can't say that Alba was faking, since there could have been no possible advantage in that either: he was well within the ball's playing distance and had a very good shot at Robben. See the video below. Notice how Muller is entirely uninterested in the play and goes straight for Jordi? Even the body language literally screams "foul!" This a fuck-up as big as the other one.

That's two on that same judge's conscience. Both the first and the fourth goals were legal as far as I can see.

So while Bayern's success is well deserved, this large of a margin is unfair and unwarranted. Now it's always hard to say what would have happened. Maybe Bayern would have still scored four, or perhaps Barca would not have been so demoralized and found it in them to bite back. And maybe one or two of the Barca defenders clear handballs in the box could/should have been sanctioned too, which would somewhat rebalance things. But in the end, football isn't made of ifs, buts, or maybes.

I would not be quick to discount Barcelona in the return leg. They're the world's best team, have come back from impressive deficits in the past (though never from four goals down, and certainly never this far into a top international competition) and they will be able to rely on Europe's loudest and most passionate football crowd. So it may well be interesting... but only if a shadow of tonight's Bayern shows up at Camp Nou next week. Otherwise, this is game over and Munich's third final in the last four years (lost to Inter in 2010 and to Chelsea in 2012).
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Manchester United win league title

Manchester United secure the English Premier League title with today's 3-0 win over Aston Villa. Pretty average second half after a killer first half marked by Van Persie's hat trick: two opportunistic tap-ins and a glorious volley that, I am sure, will be part of every EPL highlight reel from here to kingdom come. I mean, check it out:

As usual, when Man U decide to push to win, they usually do. That's a significant part of what makes a great team. Here's some numbers:

• This is the 20th league title, of which 13 obtained under Ferguson in the Premier League era. That's 13 out of the last 22, the most impressive league record of any European club, past or present.

• In every Premier League season that United have NOT won, they still finished 2nd or 3rd. Again, no European team has achieved that feat over such a long time span.

• This is the third time (after 1992-1993 and 1995-1996) that Man U win the Premier League after losing the season's first match. In 2007-2008 they went winless the first three matches, though starting with two draws.

Even as a Chelsea fan, I must say chapeau to the winners. And next year we will kick your ass so bad you won't sit for a decade!

When is sports violence a crime?

As is by now well known, last Sunday Luis Suarez bit Branislav Ivanovic. Liverpool announced an undisclosed fine and the FA has opened an investigation for violent conduct. At the time of my writing here there is no clear indication of what consequences Suarez will face, though a long-ish ban is very likely.

Some cases, like Cantona's infamous 1995 kung-fu kick to a spectator, are obviously criminal, but Suarez's case is harder to judge. Where to draw the line between a crime and a rule infraction? Many acts performed on a football pitch, not to mention in the more violent contact sports like rugby and boxing, are surely crimes when performed against random citizens on the street, but that doesn't mean much. A surgeon can cut people open, but if I do it that's a crime (even if I mean to heal them), so context matters and we all know that.

An obvious discriminant is consent. Just as a patient consents to surgery, by participating in a contact sport players consent to a certain level of reasonable roughness. The underlying idea, which I take for granted, is that sensible adults can consent to virtually any activity, no matter how potentially damaging to their bodies (yes, there are exceptions at the borderlands of consent, like torture and death, but they're of no interest for sports so I'll leave them aside).

On the consent idea, then, Suarez's act would be a crime because agreeing to participate to football does not entail giving consent to biting acts. That is, biting would constitute unreasonable roughness. If this is so, then his act would be a crime not because it was a personal vendetta or a reaction foul unrelated to play; after all, vendettas are relatively common on a football pitch. Instead, it's that it's an unacceptable kind of vendetta. Had he kicked him, pushed him, or elbowed him in the face, it may have been different.

Even if all of the above is true, still the line is shallow. Why are kicking and pushing reasonable but biting isn't? Aren't they all inflictions of pain with the intent to harm damage? For that matter, biting is unlikely to cause any lasting damage, while kicking can break legs. So what's the rationale for establishing reasonable roughness?

Perhaps we could allow the offended party to set the standard of reasonable roughness. Just as some criminal cases depend on the victim having to press charges, likewise if Ivanovic thinks that Suarez's action is beyond reasonable roughness, then it was. This is obviously subjective, with all the pros and cons of that.

Another possibility is to appeal to popular will. Reasonable roughness is whatever most experts consider it to be. As is common with most social practices and milieus, the rules are not set in stone but evolve with time and perception. Since obviously it is impossible to "poll" the experts every time a player is ejected for violent conduct (or even to specify with sufficient generality who is and is not an expert), we will need some governing body to interpret the popular will and set standards that will seem sensible to most or all involved. The FA disciplinary board is one such body.

A third option is to refer to whether the kind of act involved in the episode of violence is an act that is also part of regular game play. There's a sense in which kicking and pushing are natural parts of football. They are fouls that, when performed intentionally and with the intent to harm, are especially heinous and punished more severely--but still punished as fouls. By contrast, biting is not a normal part of the game and it is an act of violence. A similar normative standard can hold for each sport. In boxing, for instance, punches below the belt is an abuse of a normal boxing action, but biting and kicking aren't (you hear that Mike?).

In the end, I guess that this is the same kind of debate that boards have whenever there's a case that pushes the established disciplinary guidelines. And of course it's up to individual judiciary/law enforcement agencies to intervene as they see fit. For his kick, Cantona was banned (by FIFA) from every football competition worldwide for 8 months, fined £20.000 (by Manchester United), and sentenced to 120 hours of community service (by a judge). By contrast, Suarez's infraction did not involve someone who hadn't agreed to some kind of reasonable roughness, and as such will probably be settled within the boundaries of the FA.
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I hate the Celtics...

...and I hope that, in the wake of the Boston bombings, my hatred for the Celtics  (and virtually anything Bostonian) is still somewhat socially acceptable! I'd hate it if I "had" to support Boston just because it's politically correct to do so. ;-)

Summer 2013 event calendars!

Summer is coming, and with it a plethora of summer sports! Here are my calendars from May to September. As usual, they feature only the sports and events that *I* am interested in and they are not meant to be comprehensive. Still, they are fairly inclusive. :-) Use and print however you like.

CLICK PICTURES TO ENLARGE