Safety Hazard

This is the first time I've ever seen a ball-boy so heavily involved in a football match. It's a joke, really. With about 10 minutes left of the Capital One Cup semi-final, second leg between Swansea City and Chelsea, Chelsea are getting increasingly desperate as they need to claw back two goals on aggregate. The ball drifts innocuously out for a Swansea goal-kick. The ball-boy, 17-year old Charlie Morgan (son of the Swansea director) goes to retrieve the ball. Eden Hazard, Chelsea's star Belgian, goes as well to hurry up and return the ball to get the game re-started. What happens next is a joke.

The ball-boy, on sensing Hazard near him, collapses on top of the ball and smothers it, so Hazard can't get it. After quite a few seconds of trying, and with the ball-boy obviously wasting time for his home side, Hazard gets fed-up and kicks the ball-boy so he is forced to release the ball and Hazard quickly returns it to the Swansea goalkeeper for the goal-kick. All mayhem then ensues with the Swansea players going over to complain forcefully about the ball-boy getting whacked. Chelsea players come over to intervene and the referee goes in to check what the hell's happening, all this as the ball-boy is writhing in pain and the TV cameras are focusing on him.

Eventually, the referee shows Hazard the red card, and with a resigned expression on his face, Hazard trods off the pitch. Of course, the match ends 0-0 and Swansea make it through to the Capital One Cup final against League One side Bradford City. OK, Hazard maybe should not have kicked Morgan but the ball-boy is certainly no angel either. It was really obvious that he was trying to waster time, and anyone would have got impatient at that point. I would have done it. What confirms the ball-boy's intentrions is that he had boasted on Twitter before the game that 'the king of ball-boys is back and he was needed for time-wasting'. So he has blatantly admitted his crime!

But I think this is not the first time that ball-boys have been guilty of this crime, and it really needs to stop right now. Ball-boys should be purely neutral and do their damn job of returning the ball to the players, before somebody gets killed. Maybe the next ball-boy that wastes time for his home team should get the red card.