Former Liverpool midfielder Jermaine Pennant has blasted "classless" Tottenham Hotspur forward Richarlison for juggling the ball against Nottingham Forest.
The Brazilian international, who was cleared out by Brennan Johnson immediately after showing off the piece of trickery, has been slammed by all and sundry in the wake of the incident. There was, you might have noticed, a football match in the middle of it all, which Spurs won 2-0 at the City Ground.
Whatever you think of Richarlison's showboating in itself, the reaction has been blown out of all proportion in the national media. Johnson dealt with it in the moment, dealing out "instant justice", as David Prutton so fittingly put it on the Garibaldi Red podcast.
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But that hasn't stopped pundits like Pennant from giving their hot takes.
The 39-year-old believes that only the very best players in the game have "earned the right" to partake in such classless activities as keepy-uppies, calling the manner in which he did it "cheap" and "ugly".
"He hasn't earned the right to be doing that kind of stuff," the Nottingham native told talkSPORT. "If you're Thierry Henry, (Cristiano) Ronaldo, (Lionel) Messi, even Neymar, then that's that type of player. They're full of tricks, that's them.
"But it was the way he did it. It's not like the ball hung in the air and he brought it out of the sky, kept it up. Fair enough, then you kind of applaud it. The ball was rolling at zero miles an hour and he flicks it up himself.
"There's just no class, that was cheap, it was ugly, it was horrible. It was a lack of respect for himself and for Forest.
"And, deservingly so, he was taken out. I guarantee you now that if he had done that in training there'd have been a ruckus."
Pennant went on to make a rather patronising point about Nottingham Forest, suggesting that Richarlison would only attempt such a thing against a promoted club. The same Forest, that is, that outplayed Tottenham despite the scoreline.
"It's actually classless, it's sad to see," his rant continued. "It's really sad to see. He came off the bench for starters, it's not like he scored a hat-trick.
"Forest have only come up, it's not against Liverpool or Man City, it's Nottingham Forest. Absolutely not (doing that against Liverpool). It's cheap, classless, sad."
Do you agree with Pennant? Have your say in the comments below!
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