Play clean in football

The tackle by the Andorra goalkeeper that caused the death of the Tenerife forward went far beyond what we call the limit of the rules. A journalist who had been narrating the play live would probably have been able to describe it as a “criminal tackle,” an expression that after the death of Jesús de Miguel takes on a terrible meaning.

The goalkeeper drives his knee into the forward's chest. It is a tackle to cut off a counterattack that even surpasses the old defensive category of “the player will pass or the ball will pass, but not both,” a football philosophy often cited by more than one coach and more than one center-back (I would like to think from before television, replays, and VAR), and which on Monday reached its maximum expression. Because it is one thing for football to be a contact sport and another to seek out brutal contact without only caring about preventing a goal, especially when there are desperate but effective tackling alternatives that do not affect the health of the person receiving the foul.

The other current of football identity consists of playing well: the dominance of the ball through technique that leads to possession and the constant search for undetectable passes. Playing well goes with playing fair. And in days like these, and unfortunately, it becomes even clearer.