No World Cup conspiracy. Just a crappy tackle

Was it for the slap that preceded it or was there something a bit bigger involved?

Make up your own mind what Michael Ballack’s lawyer, Michael Becker, is hinting at with his comments regarding Kevin-Prince Boateng, the culprit in the crude tackle that felled his German international client in the FA Cup final and simultaneously ruled him out of the World Cup.

“To me, what Boateng did was not simply an insidious tackle but was designed to intentionally injure,” he said, delivering his opinion with a pretty serious allegation. “We are now looking into all of our legal options, which could lead to both civil and penal consequences.”

Boateng plays for Ghana. Ballack for Germany. Ghana and Germany play on 24 June in Soccer City stadium in Johannesburg. Could Boateng have seen a chance to injure Germany’s star player in Ghana’s national interest and simply taken it?

Sounds preposterous and you would hope that it is, but when you see Boateng sizing up Ballack from quite a distance and going like the clappers to get to him, it’s a question worth pondering.

Not quite as bad as Roy Keane on Alf-Inge Haaland, but bad enough.

"Every spectator could see what Boateng has done and that was clearly a premeditated foul… the football field is not outside the law, even if Boateng believes that," Becker continued.

Something Kevin Muscat knows too well, having been taken to the High Court in 2004 for a tackle on Charlton’s Matty Holmes in the FA Cup in 1998. Holmes wanted $6 million and settled on a $600,000 payout from Muscat plus costs.

How bad was Musky’s tackle? As The Age reported: “[It] left Holmes needing four operations, a steel rod in his left leg and skin grafts from his buttocks to repair a hole in his ankle, and his lawyers said doctors initially feared his leg might have to be amputated.”

Ballack’s ankle injury is not as serious and he’ll be back in eight weeks but it’s denied him a third World Cup and what kind of price can you put on that?

Boateng’s Portsmouth team-mate Jamie O’Hara has come out in the press to assure the naysayers there is no nefarious World Cup plot, while Boateng’s father Prince insists it’s all personal and Ballack and his son have been feuding since they squared off in the Bundesliga in 2006, back when Kevin-Prince was playing for Hertha Berlin and Ballack for Bayern Munich.

Only Boateng himself can really know but his tackle on Ballack has had the effect of blowing out Germany’s odds of winning the Cup.

I’m of the view it was just a rash tackle. Not only because Boateng appears to hesitate slightly before he collides with Ballack (unlike Keane’s intentional tackle on Haaland, which was an unrestrained flying kick) but because he played under-21 football for Germany before switching to the Black Stars just this May while his brother, Jerome, who plays for Hamburg, has been picked for and is training with Joachim Löw’s provisional squad.

It would be an extraordinary act of treason for a man born and raised in Germany, who carries a German passport, who speaks German, who’s played for Germany from under-15s through to under-21s, who was born to a German mother, who is related to 1954 World Cup Nationalmannschaft hero the late Helmut Rahn and has a German international for a brother to do such a thing.

Boateng might be a hot-head and likely he will pay dearly for his self-described “stupid” tackle but he’s no Lee Harvey Oswald.

The conspiracy theorists should let this one rest.

http://theworldgame.sbs.com.au/jesse-fink/blog/1001847/No-World-Cup-conspiracy.-Just-a-crappy-tackle