| 07.12.2009 |
|
||||||||
| Ernest Hemingway famously defined courage as grace under pressure, and Markus Babbel's performance in handling his firing as Stuttgart coach on Sunday lived up to that ideal. The scenes outside Stuttgart's stadium this weekend, where a 3000-strong mob of "fans" gathered to berate and threaten players and coaches, were the epitome of loss of perspective. Babbel took responsibility for his team's poor performance and accepted his dismissal. But he also defended his players - and rightly so. I'm all for supporters letting players hear about it when they fail to give their all on the pitch. But that simply isn't the case with Stuttgart. The squad lacks confidence and has gotten some bad breaks. But there hasn't been a lack of effort. Stuttgart fans need to remind themselves that the man who scored their lone goal on Saturday was Serdar Tasci - a 22-year-old who ignored team doctors' recommendations to try and help his club. Doesn't sound like the act of an overpaid, under-performing football mercenary to me. Last month, in the wake of Robert Enke's suicide, the German football world was full of pious moralizing about the need to see players as human beings. The Stuttgart fans who nearly rioted on Saturday, as Babbel also rightly pointed out, seemed to have learned nothing from that. No player - and I say this as a Hertha Berlin fan - deserves to have his life threatened, even in jest, because of what happens on the pitch. So, Stuttgart supporters, take a piece of well-meaning advice: Chill out! Your team is very unlikely to go down, and if they do, you should follow your ex-coach's example and show some grace instead of running amok like drunken louts. |
||||||||
|
||||||||
| 0 Comments |