Like most people, I hate it when people disagree with me. But it actually bothers me more when people disagree with themselves. We've seen an example of that in the World Cup. Brazilian star Neymar is out of the tournament with a fractured vertebra. Since he sustained the injury getting kneed in the back by a Colombian player, we're now hearing complaints that referees aren't doing enough to protect the star players. We know that teams focus their defence on such star players, and there seems to be a blurry line between "playing physical defence" and "hoping for a lucky injury."
I welcome the concern for players' welfare, as well as the acknowledgement that talented players make the game entertaining. But while I may agree with these urging a crackdown on rough play, I doubt that the people making doing the urging agree. If you listen to sports people talk long enough, you'll notice that for every claim that talented players aren't protected, there are at least ten pleas to "let them play," keep the game physical, let the defence do its job, or other polite ways of asking for the rules to not be enforced.
Nobody seems to realize that there is no easy or obvious solution here. We have to find a balance between physical play and player safety, or between empowering the defence and letting the offensive stars perform. If you want the stars protected, you have to learn to bite your tongue when the game is slowed by the referee's calls. Or, if you want a sport that doesn't really have rules, you have to expect that star players are going to get injured. If only we could get more countries to watch hockey, they'd understand this.
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