Careful with the paranoia.
The fact is that Hazard isn't Rooney, Suarez, Barton. Or J...
Careful with the paranoia.
The fact is that Hazard isn't Rooney, Suarez, Barton. Or JT. Or Balotelli. He hasn't been in serial negative headlines of his own making. (Just the one about his tweeting when he joined Chelsea.) And in this particular case, although it is generally agreed by everyone that he went about what he was doing in the wrong way, his motivation was in the spirit of the game.
This is the first red card of his career. He has had ten yellows in over 260 matches. If I remember correctly his only yellow for Chelsea came when he was fouled and the ref incorrectly decided he had dived. He gets fouled and kicked a great deal in matches due to his skill and threat, and I have never seen him complain or retaliate.
So I think he deserves a bit of a break, where Suarez or Rooney or JT or Balotelli or BArton might not get one. But I tend to think that the press wouldn't have been too hard on any of them. Although "football star kicks ball boy" is a wonderful headline, even the press can see that it was something with the right intention gone wrong.
The ball boy was his own worst enemy with the prematch tweeting. But I think everyone should lay off him. He's only a kid who has done something silly. He doesn't deserve the world picking on him.
Robert
