Kerlon's "seal dribble" causes controversy

http://sports.yahoo.com/sow/news?slug=ap-sealdribble&prov=ap&type=lgns


I personally think there's nothing wrong with it - if he has the skill to pull it off then that's to his and his team's benefit. If others foul him to try and stop him, then they should be rightly punished.

Amazing that people get angry over it. Sheesh. Nowadays we get angry when players entertain. Sadly that's the way of the sport.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=FpcYH_xCSiQ

Nice find TS!

It does raise a good question, what are opponents to do?

Stand in front of him or track him until the ball comes down.

Shoulder to shoulder is legal, so use that to make him lose balance.

Mexicanbecks wrote:It does raise a good question, what are opponents to do?

He is not that big, can they not try and header the ball also?

it's pathetic to label a skill as provocation. it's a legal move. the defender's job is to close him down enough so he doesn't have the space to do the trick. it's just another method to hold onto the ball and draw a foul.

having said that, it's bizarre if the defender in that video could get banned for a year, as the article suggests

He clean elbowed him in the face? What do you expect?

robert wrote:He clean elbowed him in the face? What do you expect?

3 match ban? is it any worse than Ball's stamp last year or such incidents.

I spose they are the same but that elbow looked more malicious to me. Ok maybe in the letter of the law this was way too harsh but his mentality that attacking football should be destroyed to beyond recognition makes me feel nothing about his ban.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=LYlqql38XkY&mode=related&search=

The thing is the only way to stop him is to head the ball or shoulder barge him, this wouldnt be a problem but he goes down to easy.

Kerlon (20 yo overrated kid that so far scored only one goal against a semi pro side) did that just to provoke Atletico fans and players. Like Dunga said, "Kerlon never does that when his team is not winning". Atletico vs Cruzeiro is a local derby, Cruzeiro were winning by 4x3 when he did that. He came in as a sub when they were losing by 3x2 and he didn't try that move. BTW he never does. Coelho deserved to be sent off, but he didn't intend to hurt him, he just did a hard foul. Several brazilian players from other clubs said that they would act like Coelho. If it was Fenerbahce vs Galatasaray or Liverpool vs United you would change your opinion.

No, we wouldn't. Who cares if it provokes the other team? It's pathetic and like saying if a player scores an outrageous overhead kick someone can lamp him in the face.

Those players are only bitching because they're too $h!t to do it themselves.

But sheva has a point - if he never does that move, but only pulled it out in a big derby when his team had taken the lead, then it may well be an attempt to provoke the opposition players. But you could say it's no different to keeping the ball in the corner.

Anyone else think that he looks like a cuntt?

remember Deco making a cross behind his leg against Inter recently at the Gamper (we were winning 4-0 against their reserve side) and the opponents got a bit irate at him for doing it.

Of course the cross would be a bit better if he had done it properly but the Inter players thought it was disrespectful. It wasn't useful as a skill at all in this case and I can understand them. On the other hand, football is entertainment.

A player can be shoved of the ball without making a foul and he would look like a Pr!ck at the same time. A much better way of dealing with it.

I think both are right, Kerlon and Coelho (the guy that hit him).

Kerlon has the right to make his silly moves, and Coelho has the right to think "what a pussy" and beat him, knowing that he may get a red.

and Sheva is right, Kerlon is overrated.


@Kas

I've got nothing against humiliating the opposition. I love the "Olés" when my team is winning, and I can understand our adversaries doing the same. I also can understand a player that gets angry and then hits someone, as far as he gets a red.


this fight happened in tha late 90s, in a São Paulo State final between Corinthians and Palmeiras, at the end of the game. the game ended when the fight began, and I can't remember a better winning over Palmeiras than this one. Corinthians were champions, won 2-1:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fo8BDn8atUI

Tim Vickery column: Why the 'seal dribble' has sparked huge controversy in Brazil



More than any other factor, Brazilian football owes its worldwide prestige to the individual brilliance and creativity of its top players.

Take Leonidas and his bicycle kicks, Didi and his 'dry leaf' free-kicks, the amazing dribbles of Garrincha and the countless innovations of Pele.

So the Brazilian game has been having a long, hard look at itself in the past week as a result of the violent reaction to yet another local creation - Kerlon's so-called 'seal dribble.'

Nineteen-year-old Kerlon has developed an ability to flick the ball into the air and then run while balancing it on his forehead - a bit like a circus seal.

He first revealed the move some two-and-a-half-years ago in the South American Under-17 Championship.

He has had an injury-hit time since then, but is now starting to make the breakthrough in senior football as a second-half substitute for Cruzeiro of Belo Horizonte, currently second in the Brazilian league table.

Just over a week ago he unleashed the seal dribble in the big local derby against Atletico.

Opposing defender Coelho barged him to the ground, while other Atletico players screamed at him in anger.

Many people in the Brazilian game - including, it seems, national team coach Dunga, seem to think they were justified in their reaction.

How can this possibly be explained in the land traditionally viewed as the spiritual home of the beautiful game?

The answer touches on one of football's great truths; the game is indeed a universal language, but one which is spoken with different accents.

Different cultures find different things objectionable.

British players are liable to be angered by diving or by attempts to get an opponent sent off.

These practices are more widely accepted in Brazil as part of the game.

But if you want to start a war on a Brazilian pitch, a touch of ball juggling in the closing stages of a game your team is winning will quickly light the touch paper.

This will be seen as unpardonable provocation - and that is an explosive quantity on a Brazilian football field.

The noted Brazilian anthropologist Roberto da Matta has written that unlike European football, the game in his country "is a source of individual expression much more than an instrument of collectivisation".

He continued...it is a battle of "individual wills who seek to escape from the cycle of defeat and poverty".

In a very hierarchical society, the player who comes up with a new trick is a pawn who has turned the tables and become a king.

It perhaps helps explain why Brazilian football has come up with so many moments of individual genius - and also why those on the receiving end of the move feel especially humiliated.

Their personal defeat is being publicly rubbed into their nose.

Kerlon's problem is that his seal dribble is being viewed as a provocation.

Even if he unleashes it - as he usually does - on the way towards goal, with the objective of rounding the defence and getting in a shot - the defender feels that the whole thing has been done with the sole aim of making him look foolish.

It is for this reason that many in the game are of the view that he should never try the move when his team are winning.

But there are others, especially in the media, who are arguing that while the sport continues to come up with such moments of individual flair, the game of football is winning.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/internationals/7009897.stm

The guy who fouled Kerlon has been suspended for 4 months

That's FAR too harsh IMO. Should have been a standard 3 or 5 match suspension.