Arsenal forward Eduardo Da Silva had his left leg broken after a terrible tackle by Birmingham’s Martin Taylor in Saturday’s match between the two. The match ended tied 2-2.
Taylor delivered a sliding, studs up tackle at Eduardo’s left leg that snapped it at the ankle. The ghastly video replays show the bone sticking out of Eduardo’s socks.
Could Eduardo’s career be over? It is entirely possible. Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger stated after the match that "More than the season is over."
Wenger called for Taylor to receive a life-time ban for the tackle. It is an understandable reaction from Wenger but might be a bit much. The tackle was terrible, and Taylor deserves a lengthy suspension, but calling it intentional would be a stretch and a life-time ban isn’t happening.
There are YouTube clips of the tackle, but since they are being taken down as quickly as they’re being put up I decided not to post a link. You can search for yourself if you really need to see the play. It isn’t the for the faint of heard, that’s for sure.
What do you think of the incident? Share your thoughts on it below.
hey richard, you are way off base here saying that you cannot punish based on the outcome. if you shoot at someone with a gun, with the intent to scare them, and miss, it is attempted murder. if you do the same act, only, instead you wound the person and they die, it is murder. both scenarios have different punishments regardless of what the initial intent was. taylor should receive the most extreme punishment for his actions….for two reasons…..so that he will face an appropriate punishment AND to deter such tackles from others in the future.
Yes, it was a “mistimed” tackle.
Taylor wont get more than three games.
All the best to Eduardo in his recovery.
This “mis-timed” tackle excuses is utter BS. The problem wasn’t that the tackle was late. The problem was that the tackle as “Studs-up”!!! Even had the tackle been “timed” properly and he had gotten ball first, it’s still a red card.
That was an awful tackle. The only thing that makes that worse than other tackles I have seen is that you could see his leg break. His career could easily be over. I think Taylor should be handed a lengthy suspension and a big fine. I would also fine the coach for his comments. Taylor should be suspended for the rest of the season, and the start of next. But like people have said before, there needs to be a standard punishment. It should not depend on the injury.
I saw this tackle live on tv and jumped out of my seat. Upon viewing the replay it’s even worse. And I’m not even arguing that Taylor intended to injure. It was a lunging tackle, studs up, and VERY high. Given that it ended a talented young man’s career (let’s not fool ourselves with false hope) I think it justifies a remainder of the season ban. At BEST it’s ridiculously incompetent. If you need to make a judgment, look only at Taylor on the replay. What could he possibly be thinking when he committed to that? The FA must respond with a view towards preventing this happening again.
Steve:
You have a frivoluous disregard for the facts. No one mentioned a Volvo. And she doesn’t cheat until after she gets him back. If you are not going to pay attention, there is no point in arguing with you.
Hahaha no offense to anyone, I just love how this has turned into a conversation about running down a cheating ex with a volvo
Silly, yes. Exaggerated to make my point, as well. As for your punishment for missing, I vote reconciliation and she makes your life miserable through a long series of affairs with your best friends.
Richard, UK,
Duh….less than if you would have hit her.
Tony:
Silly comparison, but OK.
I drive towards my ex-girlfriend hoping I’ll smash her to tiny pieces because I’m a maniac, but by pure luck I miss. I WANTED TO KILL THE BITCH.
What’s my punishment?
Richard:
If you perform a dangerous act without regard for the safety of another, and you miscalculate, what difference does the intention make?
Say your girlfriend dumps you and you want to scare her by, say, driving your car towards her, intending to turn at the last moment. You mistime the turn and kill her. Does the defense, “I only meant to scare her?” make a bit of difference? No – you placed yourself in the position where greater harm than you intended could be caused. You are responsible for the death.
This was deliberate, thug tactics. It deserves to be stamped out. If it costs him his career -as it may cost Eduardos – too f’ing bad.
Tony:
Completely agree with the wanting to stamp out the thuggish element of soccer. It’s embarrassing, but it’s an ideal that’s uninforcable and vague.
What if someone performs a viscious horror tackle designed to break a leg but only causes the player to be out with a bad bruised leg for a week or so. Then what if someone clearly didn’t mean to break a leg, but snaps it clean and it looks bad on telly. He’s no thug, but he gets banned for life? Not fair, is it?
>that’s silly to have a rule based on the outcome rather than the act.
Richard:
Shoot a gun at some and he’s wounded, you get ten years. He dies, you get life.
Four minutes into the game the thug tried to deliver a message. He took the risk of causing the serious injury he did cause. Punishments are routinely determined by the out come. So should this one. Sacrifice this thug for life and maybe pathetic thuggery will start to go out of the game.
You can’t tie the length of the suspension to the length of the injury because it makes the converse difficult. In other words, how then do you have a standard to punish something that may have been equally violent and/or premeditated, but doesn’t result in a serious injury. The challenge deserves a serious penalty, but it cannot be directly related to Eduardo’s time out whether it would exceed it or not.
Best wishes for a speedy and complete recovery to Eduardo.
You can’t ban him much more than he would’ve been had the challenge not hurt Eduardo, that’s silly to have a rule based on the outcome rather than the act.
Still, it was a shocker. 5 game ban, a severe ticking off and a chunky fine sounds about right. If I was the B’ham manager I’d bench him for the season too, but obviously he can’t do that or his team mates will have a fit.
How different is this injury from Henrik Larsson’s horror leg split while playing for Celtic against Lyon? Larsson did eventually make it back, and we can only hope Eduardo da Silva comes back someday too… he’s been in England such a short time after moving from the Croatian league.
That said, I don’t think the tackle was extraordinarily bad nor was it intentional, not like Keane on Alfie Haaland all those years ago, not even close. Honestly, people’s legs get stepped on accidentally all the time in poorly timed challenges; the main difference here was the ghastly result.
For that challenge, Keane got a red card, a 5-game suspension and a £150,000 fine. I’d be surprised if Taylor got more.
wow, i am a gooner. the last postings were disgusting. im from dc, we remmeber joe theisman, this was worse than that. BC shouldnt even be an epl team. boring boring arsenal
^^^ LOL, sounds like some sort of lizard
He’s Crozillian
Is he Brazilian or Croatian? It’s funny how both are taking offense here.
Checking a YouTube post of the tackle, all the comments were from people claiming this was a retaliation for the Croatian win, or a retaliation for being a Brazilian. Yikes…
Regardless, a truly horrific tackle. I like Arsenal least out of all the top EPL teams, and my heart sunk when I saw all this unfold. I sure hope God blesses him with a good recovery, even to play the game again, let along at an EPL level.
While I thought Wenger went a bit over the top with his original comments, one of Steve Bruce’s comments was, in my opinion, even more so.
http://soccernet.espn.go.com/news/story?id=510646&cc=5901
“He would never, ever do anything malicious. He has mis-timed the tackle, and I’ve seen it. Some would say it is not even a yellow card.”
It’s horrific. I wonder if Eduardo can come back from it. I hope so.
the tackle didnt look that bad live because of where the tackle was in relation to where the camera was. i thought the same thing too when i first saw it…. but here is a link for some pictures that will show it.
http://withleather.com/
just scroll down to the second item (that might change, but it will be there) and then go to 3:10 on the clip. it will show pictures of the tackle and the ensuing breaking of his leg. it is obviously disturbing, so it might not be for you.
I saw the tackle, and to be honest, I didn’t think it was all that bad.
Wenger has since softened from his original opinion about a lifetime ban.
in regards in Ben Thatcher’s punishment for the elbow to the face that knocked Pedros Mendes unconscious and led to a seizure, Wikipedia says this:
Thatcher would be banned for six matches, two of which would be suspended, and fined six weeks’ wages for the challenge. This punishment is separate from the sanctions made by the FA, who suspended Thatcher for eight matches, with a further fifteen game suspended ban for two years.
That’s a starting point.
JJ, well said but MLS is a terrible example to use. It has the worst refereeing of any league I follow, and also the worst league office of any league I’ve EVER followed, which includes the disciplinary committee.
Your point is well taken but MLS is a complete joke in that regard already, so kind of pointless to use them as the example.
I don’t remember who said Eduardo could be an all time great but I think that is a stretch. The guy is turning 25 on Monday and is still a fringe player. You can quote a guy like Puskas who was an all time great late in his career, but he was ALREADY an all time great before he went to Madrid. A bit of a stretch for Eduardo.
Doesn’t make the tackle any less horrific though.
The problem in soccer is they give out too many cards for holding, grabbing, harmless elbows, little shoves, etc. all the stupid stuff but let lunging and late challenges sometimes go either unpunished or with warnings. The emphasis is on the wrong infractions – the real danger is that these types of plays can happen much more frequently in soccer. Start cracking down on dangerous challenges rather than giving out cards for dissent.
MLS operates the same way, gives Rico Clark 9 games for kicking Ruiz but only 3 for Tyrone Marshall breaking Kenny Cooper’s leg in the 90th minute.
The sackless FA will never give him what he deserves. C’mon he’s English.
He should be gone for a year and Birmingham should be significantly fined. A foul that early was done at McLeish’s instructions and there’s no place for it in the game.
And I DO NOT like Arsenal this is a neutral viewpoint.
Taylor should be out for as long as Da Silva is out; not a day sooner.
Horrible tackle. Simply atrocious.
I would be surprised if he was banned for more than 7 games though unless they find out that he intended to do something like this. Look back to last year when Thatcher intentionally smashed (I forget his name)’s face into the ground causing him to go into a seizure. That was far more despicable and Thatcher is already back playing.
Also, saying he ‘may never play again’ is media and Arsenal hype. I’ve seen much worse breaks where the player has gone on to play again as if nothing happened. Medical science has advanced quite a bit believe it or not. It’s not the 1950’s anymore.
typical Birmingham scum. Im no gooner, but Birmingham is a trash club and a trash city.
You know what’s funny, Adebayor was pulled pretty hard in the box, the ref ignored it as it was in extra time and he probably saw no point in calling the penalty.
About a minute later he gave the game-tying penalty to Birmingham. Like I said, I hate Arsenal…but what a crappy day for them. They should probably send video of the non-call on Adebayor along with the footage of Taylor’s foul.
It’s a terrible incident but the problem really starts from the fact they don’t punish tackles like this that don’t injure.
It’s all odds. You let a sloppy player take enough shots at people, eventually someone gets injured.
If they cracked down on this type of thuggery it would be good for the game.
My God.
That was disgusting.
Ban should equal Eduardo’s time out for injury. If he’s out forever, then so should Talyor.
-Mike
Wasn’t intentional? Ives, the game hadn’t even reached the five minute mark. Taylor intended it to be a hard foul to set the tone. I’m not saying he intentionally tried to break Eduardo’s ankle, but it was an intentional, tone setting tackling.
And I hate Arsenal.
Absolutely appaling foul. The guy should never play again.
Maybe Taylor didn’t “intend” to snap Eduardo’s ankle, but he certainly intended to go in ridiculously hard on the play. Intent was intent, when you intentionally go in to hurt someone and it ends up far worse than you expected, the intent was still there.
Guess what, you reap what you sow. 1 year minimum ban I say, if not more.
And I HATE the gooners.
What was the ban handed to the guy from Man City who took a run at Pedro Mendes? Since this actually resulted in a long-term serious injury that ban will be the starting point of the committee which will decide the ban.
For his own safety Taylor better hope for a significant ban. I’m sure all other players are disgusted with this, but if Taylor plays against Arsenal again I would think he would be in real danger of a similar injury from Arsenal players.
I agree with the statement that Taylor should be banned as long as Eduardo is injured. If its a career ending injury, then ban for life.
Well, Taylor’s played his last match of the season, though a lifetime ban seem far too harsh.
Could anyone tell me about lengthy suspensions that have been handed out in similar circumstances? It’d be helpful to get a point of reference.
Seems like English players are trying to get back at the Croatians for knocking them out of Euro 2008. In all seriousness, that POS of Taylor needs to be out as long as “Dudu” is. That was absolute garbage, that play. Someone like that is of no use to anyone in top line football. NO MORE LOANS TO BIRMINGHAM by my Gunners!!!! Crap!
http://youtube.com/watch?v=RpHufZEaFe0
Yeah, no way he comes back from this. His career is over.
What a Frickin hack job, Im no Arsenal but as a fan of soccer I think it was a disgusting display. Taylor should receive a lifetime ban or 5 year ban or a fine equivelant to a 7 year ban.
Where was the retaliatory tackle ???
You gotta protect and stand up for your teamates. I dot like hack football, but if they take out your player you gotta take out one of theires so next time they think twice.
Taylor will say hes sorry but we all know he really doesn’t give a sh!t
Here’s the link to the pic and video:
http://www.bigsoccer.com/forum/showthread.php?t=662170
A Horror!!!
I didn’t see the whole thing… just the effects in a slideshow kind of presentation. Horrible, horrible stuff.
Was a shockingly bad tackle, but its amazing this sort of injury doesn’t happen more often. Certainly Taylor had no intent to injure, he was just too slow as Alex McLeish said.