Newton’s Law says force is equal to mass times acceleration. What it doesn’t say is what a penalty is, but perhaps it should. Rafa Benítez reckons so at least after his team ended another weekend in the relegation zone, fans whistling and waving white hankies while he had a quick flick through Principia on his way to meeting the ladies and gentlemen of the press. Never mind the referee, the assistant referees, the fourth official, the video assistant referee, the assistant to the video assistant referee (two of those), the TV technician, the supervisor and whoever lurks in that side-room at Las Rozas, what we really need is a physicist, the Celta coach told them; time to travel to Nasa to find the best.
Well, anything had to be better than this. On the night after Benítez had insisted his team would keep on keeping on however many times they “trip us up” and before the city’s biggest newspaper would describe them as Spanish football’s “punch bag,” just there to be pummelled, victims of a shadowy hidden hand, he lamented that this was the same old story. The fans would agree, if not solely for the reasons he offered up. “Once again we’re talking about how well we played, how many chances we had,” Benítez claimed on Saturday as they trudged home through the storm. “And how we didn’t get three points.”
