Last night’s FA Cup meeting between West Ham United and Manchester City was bizarre for a number of reasons.
There was fierce debate over the penalty which gave City the lead, an embarrassing open goal miss from West Ham’s Sofiane Feghouli, and fans literally queueing up to leave with 40 minutes to go as the hosts slumped to a 5-0 loss.
But the strangeness wasn’t restricted to on-pitch matters.
At half-time, Gary Lineker and his Match of the Day panelists debated whether the home side should have been awarded a penalty of their own when Gaël Clichy felled Feghouli as the Algerian fired wide of an empty net.
We expected some level of argument, but what we got was a series of existential musings on the nature of fouls, contact, and the rules of football in general.
Clichy’s challenge on Feghouli was a big talking point (photo credit: Ian Walton/Getty Images)
Former West Ham frontman Ian Wright was at the centre of things, arguing Clichy’s challenge wasn’t a foul because Feghouli had already played the ball, in the face of Lineker’s ‘Brexit means Brexit’-esque argument that “if it’s a foul, it’s a foul”.
“He’s kicked the ball, then the foul’s hit him,” Wright says, before continuing to maintain that said foul, which he described as a foul seconds earlier, wasn’t a foul.
Are you still following? It’s a little confusing.
Wright thought he had found the smoking gun, asking Lineker if he’d have pulled play back for a foul had the ball gone into the net.
In fairness to him, he hasn’t played professional football for a few years so it’s reasonable to assume he’s forgotten about the advantage rule. No, wait, that’s not really reasonable at all.
This challenge got @GaryLineker and @IanWright0 particularly vocal
Who are you with?https://t.co/2gLIgvsoZS pic.twitter.com/XjxWaQ5FiW
— Match of the Day (@BBCMOTD) January 6, 2017
