La Liga has a growing problem with extra balls this season...As I climb out of the innuendo gutter let me explain that this is indeed a dirty problem, but hardly in the way you might think.
La Liga Has An Extra Ball Problem
Apparently clubs are “instructing” ball kids to intentionally lob an extra ball on to the field of play late in matches where the home club is in the lead or for whatever reason wants to waste as much time as possible to kill the match.
It happened at least three times during Real Zaragoza's 2-1 defeat of Getafe this afternoon and it caused Getafe's manager Míchel to have a near breakdown during stoppage time as his team was trying to find an equalizing goal. At one point Míchel became so enraged that he wandered onto the field and began hollering at the referee and anyone else who would listen as the fourth official and his staff attempted to calm him down. He was probably saved from being sent off by the blatant nature of the shenanigans that were occurring. I actually think the referee sympathized with his frustration.
I don’t blame him for the reaction since what’s essentially occurring is a form of well disguised cheating. You can write this off as a rouge kid either, since it’s happened at matches across Spain throughout the season and unless there is one dedicated troublemaker traveling across the country trying to cause chaos in stoppage time, something fishy is going on.
For now, it’s likely up to the referee to punish the offending club with additional stoppage time but you’d expect that league officials will have to address the issue for next season. Until then we need a fancy name for this problem...I’m going to go ahead and eliminate “Ballgate” from contention.
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