Thomas Tuchel seemed to be in a playful mood on Friday, admitting he and his players and his staff had been laughing about his spat with Antonio Conte.
No wonder they laughed. To all of us who were there, it was, indeed, embarrassingly hilarious for a moment or two. But it is unlikely Anthony Taylor has been laughing too much this past week. It is unlikely officials who try to keep order in an increasingly lawless grassroots game have been laughing too much.
But Tuchel finds the whole scenario funny, so that’s ok, and you cannot deny the punishment is a genuine cause for amusement. A £35,000 fine for a manager who earns £200,000 a week and a one-game touchline ban, suspended for a while, for some bizarre reason.
Don’t forget, a touchline ban only hurts the egos of these characters. In reality, it is no punishment at all. As Liverpool manager, Bob Paisley won six league titles and three European Cups in eight years and would sometimes CHOOSE to watch the game from the stands. The idea that managers actually have any significant influence on proceedings from the technical area is a made-for-TV myth. It is nonsense, just like the pathetic punishment handed out to Tuchel by the Football Association.
This is a man who has undermined the integrity and the professionalism of an honest referee. This is a man who has, with his words, encouraged a social media pile-on on an official trying to do his job in an environment of hysterical, posturing managers and play-acting footballers. How does Tuchel think Taylor and his family have been feeling these past few days as over 150,000 people have signed an online petition asking for him to be banned from Chelsea matches?
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Have Taylor and his family been laughing? Taylor made a borderline call on a possible foul on Kai Havertz and missed the hair-pull on Marc Cucurella - and was then let down by VAR official Mike Dean - and that was about it. Yet Taylor was the villain of the piece, not Havertz, incidentally, who missed an absolute sitter that would have almost certainly won the game for Chelsea. Not Raheem Sterling, who also missed a couple of great chances, not the Chelsea defence who went AWOL for Harry Kane’s headed equaliser from a routine corner.
On Friday, Tuchel claimed he did not question Taylor’s integrity or honour. Yes, he did. And, in the same breath, he did so again. “There are some statistics that underline that we struggle to get the same results with him refereeing,” Tuchel said. And if that is not an implication of bias, it is hard to know what is.
The handshake handbags between the Chelsea manager and Antonio Conte were unedifying but were, as most - including Tuchel - have said, laughable. But what is not laughable is the repeated belittlement and berating of officials and the using of referees’ honest, mostly minor, mistakes as pathetic excuses for their own shortcomings. It is not funny, Thomas.
