Outlook for lawyers looks up as Tevez courts controversy

Some colleagues were at a legal conference this week where Martin Cullen, the Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism, compared being falsely accused of having affair by the media to being “raped” on a daily basis. There may well be a few actual rape victims out there who would care to differ but the Minister is entitled to his opinion. Hopefully, however, Gary Neville, felt no worse that if he had been pinched quite hard, had his toe stepped on or been kicked in the rear end when he heard Carlos Tevez had called him a bootlicker but the way the lawyers are taking over football, you can be sure that by the time you read this, he’s had a succession of them on suggesting that he practice crying on cue and head straight for the courts.

 

There have in the past, of course, been some tremendously important and beneficial legal interventions in the way football is run. Down the years, you could have made a fairly decent case for jailing a good few of the people who ran the game but some did at least have the scale of their abuses curtailed from time to time with the help of the authorities while the Bosman ruling killed off the lingering aspects of the form of sporting serfdom to which footballers had been subjected in many countries, notably England, for more than half a century.

 

Now, however, (and I’m conscious at this point that I risk sounding like somebody from the Daily Mail here) the world’s gone mad with everybody in the game, it seems, on the lookout for a basis to sue a club/players/association. A late night burger joint with a wet toilet floor would have more chance it seems, of escaping litigation than a football official who hasn’t memorised the legislation governing company law before attempting to conduct his club’s affairs.

 

Just this week we’ve had Sol Campbell revealing he’s hauling Portsmouth off the court for, amongst other things, unpaid image rights while Hull City are likely to pursue former chairman Paul Duffen as a result of some of the decisions he took while in charge at the club.

 

Now, you would not have much trouble finding a Spurs fan who would swear an affidavit to the effect that Campbell has not had an image worth a red cent since he bailed out of White Hart Lane for the wonga while precious few around Hull were complaining through the first half of last season as City’s spending helped keep them on course to stay up.

 

But at least in cases like these there is an actual allegation that a sum of money is owed in some way or another. Ahead of Manchester United’s visit to Hull late last season, the other relegation threatened clubs apparently considering suing United if they fielded a weakened team (they had a Champion League final in the pipeline and had already won the championship) and lost. In the event they did but still won thereby pleasing supporters of Hull’s rivals, at least until they copped on to the fact that their own teams were too useless to make it matter, but disappointing litigation lawyers up and down the country.

 

Ever since, indeed, the former Chelsea defender Paul Elliott sued an opposing player over the tackle that ended his career (the pair actually seemed to be proxies for the two insurance companies involved) such cases have also cropped up semi regularly and Dean Ashton was reported to be considering taking a similar action against Shaun Wright-Phillips only a few weeks ago.

 

Don’t get the wrong idea, though. As a part trained lawyer myself, I applaud the joyous lunacy of it all. It is my considered view that Michael Essien should sue Chelsea team mate Didier Drogba for the rather innocuous challenge at the African Cup of Nations last week that has prolonged the midfielder’s stint on the sidelines, Neville should have his legal team challenge Tevez in the witness box to produce a single shred of photographic evidence that the distraught United defender has ever licked a single boot (or any other item of footwear for that matter) and I fancy we can move the whole thing into a major and profitable new realm by urging top flight teams to sue teams from the lower divisions that have beaten in cup competitions on the basis of “legitimate expectation”.

 

This weekend’s 4^th round games might even provide the basis for a couple of cases. Just don’t even think of coming after me if the bets below somehow don’t work out.

 

 

Bets

 

€25 accumulator on Chelsea to beat Preston (away), Aston Villa to beat Brighton, Wolves to beat Crystal Palace, Wigan to beat Notts County (away) and Manchester City to beat Scunthorpe (away) @ 6/1.

 

€10 accumulator on Chelsea (-1.5), Villa (-1.5/2), Wigan (-0.5/1) and City (-1/1.5) to win the games above @ 12.3.

 

€25 treble on Fulham (-1/1.5) to beat Accrington Stanley away, Ipswich (0) to beat Southampton away and Burnley (0) to beat Reading away @ 8.82.

 

 

Categories: Soccer