Football needs less Ibrahimovich's

Day -483 WorldCup2018

After my many days after celebrating the happiness that special World Cup moments bring, I could easily have my tweet from earlier today as my post:

"What a cheat #Ibra is. Or at least terrible sportsmanship. It's because of players like him that non-fans make fun of football."

And that could be it because that's how angry I was watching Manchester United play in the Europa League today. But to explain a bit further, over the years I've had to withstand many a criticism from North American sports fans about how ridiculous soccer players are, for all their play-acting. I never really did have a strong counter argument because they were all mostly right. "He went down like he was shot," was the mocking line I always heard.

Today Zlatan Ibrahimovich did just that and won himself a free kick and a penalty. Went down like he was shot, when he wasn't touched and fooled the gullible referee, twice. If I had a child who played football I would refuse to let them watch Ibrahimovich play, just like parents don't let their children watch certain programmes on TV or listen to particular music. Ibrahimovich is the epitome of bad sportsmanship. His behaviour today was a disgrace to the goodness that sport can deliver to fans, players and young viewers. And i still believe in the honesty of sport despite all the questionable stories of bribes, drugs use and cheating. It is a good distraction from the immorality of politics and greed in the corporate world.

My girls don't play football but they play a lot of other sports and people like Ibrahimovich will never be a role model. There are a lot of good people out there.

My most memorable shocking World Cup cheating moment is not Maradona's "Hand of God" goal but Rivaldo's "down like he was shot in the face" act in the 2002 World Cup that got his Turkish opponent sent off, when really he had a ball kicked gently against his shins. It is because of incidents like this that North Americans, and others, make fun of football and will never bother with it.

It's not that I only care what the non-fans say. I am embarrassed watching something like what Ibrahimovich did today because it completely spoils my enjoyment of watching football. I hope that Ibrahimovich feels so ashamed that he donates the match ball (that he got to keep for scoring a hat-trick) to a children's charity that can use it as a prize in a fundraising lottery.

Tomorrow, I will find something happy again.