Saw this on soccernet.com Rio Ferdinand today responded with a formal denial of the misconduct charge brought against him by the Football Association for failing to attend a drugs test. The Manchester United defender waited until the very last minutes of his 14-day deadline to respond to the charge, which is for failure/refusal to take an anti-doping test on September 23. An FA spokesman told reporters: 'Rio Ferdinand has responded to the charge issued on October 29. He has denied the charge and requested a personal hearing. 'A date for the hearing will be scheduled in due course.' How long is this thing going to be dragged out? What do you guys think this will mean to possible Rio punishment?
It will be dragged out for as long as possible by United and Rio - not that the FA needs much help with their famous slow pace on these things... He's denying the charges, so obviously the FA didn't offer us a deal. (like Arsenal was )
Dragging things out is good in the respect that he can continue to play for us while things are being "sorted out" however.... when they do indeeed decide to ban him (if it happens), who knows what position we'll be in during the season, what if its time to make a push like we did last year in Jan to win the title, if that is when he gets banned.... it will be a tall mountain to climb. i'm sure as much as he wants to play instead of deal with it, i can't help to feel that if he knows how much time hes going to miss, serve the time, get back and play, no more stress of worrying about it. Less stress on players is GOOOOD.
I think the plan is to try and make it to the transfer window. We will assess Wes Brown's fitness and Ole's fitness and decide if we need to purchase additional cover then I suppose.
Agreed! He will not be missed as much if Brown is back or another defender is brought in. I'd also like to think that the England matches he's currently missing will be set against any ban but I'm not holding my breath about that
Rio Ferdinand's Football Association disciplinary hearing date has been set for December 18, with The Reebok Stadium hosting the two-day affair.
A stadium will be hosting the hearing? Does this mean that they expect so many people to attend that they need the seating capacity of a stadium?
update: Ferdinand Phone Home Sorry, that was cheesy but that's the kind of trashy headline we expect from Brit rags. http://www.soccer365.com/EUROPEAN_NEWS/Premiership/page_99_63246.shtml looks like rio phoned ahead and was told, “don’t bother” by testers. I still think you have to have rocks in your skull to miss a pre-scheduled screening. It’s not like they randomly drew his name on a surprise visit. No one likes packing/unpacking & he’s a multimillionaire, he can afford a posse to do the muscle work and a manager to handle other obligations. He deserves to sit a while, but 2yrs is overkill for stupidity since there doesn’t seem to be any malicious obfuscation.
Re: update: Ferdinand Phone Home There has to be some punishement for this but it is pretty clear he wasn't trying to avoid the test because he might test positive... The FA really have to decide how many matches a player should miss for being forgetful.
i've been hearing that rio may get a 3 month ban from the FA. can this be so with the news that he tried to go back and take the stupid piss test? i agree with a number of banned matches for the mistake of forgetting to take a leak, but 3 months? to me that's absurd.
Oh you guys are going to love this one... http://soccernet.espn.go.com/headlinenews?id=286305&cc=5901
Yeah, cause it sure keeps the fans away from Madrid, Arsenal, and Chelsea. Ah, xenophobia. I'm sure this will get even more interesting...
Precisely! Blatter's hypocrisy is laughable I find his constant attempts to interfere in the Ferdinand case to be ridiculous and a complete abuse of his position. It's all part of his campaign to attack anyone who stands in the way of his attempts to squeeze as much money out of the game as possible for him and his cronies. He couldn't give a crap about the game or what's good for it. What also makes me laugh is that he said Ferdinand should have been banned from playing in the Premiership before this case was heard. Which is funny because I didn't notice Blatter stepping aside even temporarily as FIFA President when the far more serious and compelling allegations of corruption were made against him. No, he stayed in the job and used his position to smother those allegations and then fire anyone who didn't agree with him. What's that about not liking "different strokes for different folks" Sepp? Club football is more important than the national game. The national game is an interesting sideshow, but it's the weekly variety of the Premiership that most fans care about. Teams can buy whoever they want, the work permit prevents exploitation so that only proven players are signed. EU and UK law covers the rest.
Blatter said: 'FIFA cannot accept different strokes for different folks.' Then I suppose they support a one or two match ban for Rio, which is exactly what EPL players in the past have received for missing a drugs test?
You hit the nail right on the head. FIFA knows that club football is what pays the bills on a daily basis, and since they have no real authority over club football it disturbs the hell out of them. As far as clubs only wanting to maximize their own revenues, could Blatter explain why FIFA wants to stage their ridiculous "World Club Championship", or whatever they're calling it this week, and why they have floated the idea of the World Cup every 2 years? Hmmmm...more money for FIFA, perhaps? Damn straight. FIFA is so jealous of the fact that UEFA is actually more powerful than them that it eats at their souls. This ridiculous crap about docking points, their stupid suggestion that top leagues only have 16 clubs, and the fact that they allow national sides to call up players at their will for friendlies (or the God-forsaken African Nations Cup) all point to the fact that FIFA is grasping at straws trying to get some power away from the clubs. Don't be surprised if the often talked about "Super League" finally develops with clubs who want to control the players whose salaries they pay and tell FIFA to go to hell.
Agreed, mostly... though I do enjoy the international game, too. It almost seems to me that Blatter is deliberately antagonizing the big clubs into a revolt. Just in the past week, he's targeted both Manchester United and Chelsea pretty explicitly. I guess it's either that he still think there's time to reverse the trend to club domination but that he has to act now... that he wants the "revolt" to happen now when he thinks he can still "beat" it... or that he wants them to just go ahead and leave, and in the process "purify" the rest of football. There just doesn't seem to be any indication of compromise in his language. And it's completely absurd. Docking Man Utd points would be a complete failing of due process (or at least, in the United States it would... not as sure about Europe). He refuses to meet with the G14, despite the fact that it's a reality and important market force. He refuses to talk about compensating clubs for international withdrawals, despite the fact that equity demands it.
Man walking down the street finds a lamp. He picks it up and out pops a genie. "I will grant you three wishes," says the genie, "anything your heart desires." "Ah," says the man, "I want my own limosine with a completely stocked bar with every kind of drink imaginable." "Done!" cries the genie and up pulls a shiny white limosine. "Your second wish?" "I want Heidi Klum panting for me in the back seat!" "Done!" cries the genie. The back window rolls down to reveal a nude Heidi Klum with a bottle of champagne in one hand and a glass in the other. She smiles and beckons to the man. "And your last wish?" The man looks at Heidi Klum then down at his crotch. "I want the world's biggest d1ck." "Done!" cries the genie. The door of the limosine opens and out steps Sepp Blatter.
You know, it's funny. Once I learned of the lenient punishments given recently to that Man City player, and a couple of players who tested positive last year, I was certain there was no problem. Why? In America, punishing Ferdinand significantly more severely for the same crime would raise tremendous legal issues. Consistency of punishment is one of the key factors in due process here. I know this isn't a criminal matter, but if it were... Equal Protection would be a major issue. And the general theory equal protection does seem to be incorporated into arbitration in the US. But in England... its not even viewed as all that influential. Just an interesting contrast in legal systems.
How strong is the players' union in England? That's where the US leagues always get crossed up with whenever a player is due for a suspension. The MLB Players Association would have the FA so scared of litigation that they's suspend him for maybe a half of a game. I would think that, should the punishment border on the ridiculous, the players' union would step in with a legal challenge.
I don't really know. That's why it's interesting to me. I'm a law student, so I can think of all sorts of reasons why Rio wouldn't be in that much danger in the US. There just wouldn't be much of a chance that a punishment significantly harsher than precedent would be upheld. But in England, this seems irrelevant. As long as it's technically possible to punish a player to a certain extent, then there's no issue with prior precedent establishing suitable precedent. Logically, there are all sorts of problems with this. If deterrence is a major goal of punishment, then all the previous decisions have been meaningless. If fairness in the law is meaningful, then you can't hand out vastly disparate punishments for substantially similar offenses. If certain offenses "deserve" certain punishments, then obviously you've got contradiction. If you're going to start cracking down, the only fair way to do this is to announce it prospectively. Otherwise, justice is not served. I generally prefer the British justice system to ours, for various reasons. But this just seems bizarre that something so central in our view of suitable punishments has almost no impact in theirs.
its the media here in the UK there all muppets, the tabloids... that joke was funny... sepp blatter is a wanker yea. Does this prick and the media not know that davids and stam both got 5 and 4 months respectively FOR TAKING DRUGS not missing one and the old git was also talking about docking points of manyoo?? HELLO.. what about arsenals players pushing Ruud around, that brings no reaction from fatter i mean blatter, yet cus Rio misses some pi55 test he and the media want him banned for 2 years and manyoo docked points grrr