The victim of the challenge suffered a broken leg so we don’t want to be seen to be making light of it but did it really warrant a ten-match ban? Have a look and judge for yourself.
The controversial challenge took place in a clash between St. Etienne and Sochaux in Ligue 1 at the weekend, when 19-year old St. Etienne defender Kurt Zouma launched himself towards Thomas Guerbert and although he made contact with the ball, he also went through the back of Guerbert, who suffered a broken leg and looked in quite a lot of pain immediately afterwards.
Last night, the governing body of the French Football Leagues (LFP) imposed a ten-game ban on Zouma for the tackle and the very promising defender is now likely to miss the rest of the year through suspension.
The French authorities have been taking a zero-tolerance approach to incidents such as this, but although Zouma’s challenge was a bit reckless – he practically did the splits in the air so wide apart were his feet, which were both way off the ground – but there have arguably been far worse challenges that haven’t received anything like the same punishment as this.
Certainly, it doesn’t look nearly as bad as a leg-breaking tackle by Nice’s Valentin Eysseric on St.Etienne’s Jeremy Clement last season which was anything but Nice and earned Eysseric an 11-game ban.
So was Zouma hard done by or are the authorities right to take a hard-line approach in order to discourage challenges of this type in the future? Feel free to let us know in the comment box below.
Hat-tip: Reddit Soccer
