Gas Between the Goalposts

(~5 minutes to read)

(This is not an article for people who are offended by flatulence. If you are one of those people, please select another article to read.)

Headline: Swedish Footballer Sent off for Farting on the Pitch

If only the above article had been about cricket instead of soccer, the title of this piece would have written itself—“Wind in the Willows”. However, it was soccer, so we have to work with what we’re given.

When I read the BBC article, two thoughts struck me. The first was, “The BBC actually allows the word ‘fart’ in its content, and more specifically, in its headlines?” The second was, “What the heck has letting rip got to do with the rules of Association Football?”

Surprisingly, I can find little scholarly research online about the effects of “holding it in” on one’s health. Unsurprisingly, there is a plethora of material on men’s websites, forums such as Yahoo, and medical websites of questionable authority.

According to the limited amount of material on the wonderweb that I’m prepared to access (there’s a lot of sketchy-looking websites that I don’t want to risk visiting), holding it in is bad for you in all sorts of ways, from the mild discomfort of bloating, indigestion and heartburn to a potentially life-threatening condition called diverticulitis.

Given the physical demands of playing footie at any decent level, I would have thought that a body full of gas would have a significantly negative effect on a footballer’s performance. Just the need to clench while running, jumping for a header, or executing one of those impressive-looking overhead scissor-kicks would undoubtedly challenge a person’s concentration. Compound that with a belly that feels like you’ve just eaten an ostrich or are about to give birth to one, and I’m sure you can see that “holding it in” is ill-advised for sportspeople of all persuasions.

Apparently, the referee deemed the player’s gaseous omission to be “unsporting behaviour”.  Really? It’s not like the guy trumped in someone’s face, or farted and followed through. Besides, if he had, the only foul he would have committed would have been on himself.

Rather than ridicule the ref’s decision from a position of relative ignorance (I have never refereed a soccer game, haven’t trained to do so, and probably never will), I looked up the Laws of the Game and the interpretive notes that accompany them to see how our Swedish soccer player could have contravened the rules, so that I could ridicule the referee’s decision from a position of relative informedness (yes, there is such a word). Here are the possibilities I came up with regarding unsporting behaviour.

• Commits a foul for the tactical purpose of interfering with or breaking up a promising attack.
• Acts in a manner which shows a lack of respect for the game.
• Verbally distracts an opponent during play or at a restart.
• Makes unauthorised marks on the field of play.

Can a fart be described as a “verbal distraction”? Does it show a lack of respect for the game? In both cases, I’m tempted to answer in the negative.

Without the follow-through, a fart doesn’t leave a mark on the field of play, so that one’s out.

And I’m absolutely convinced that the trumpet call of a footballer’s lower alimentary system isn’t going to interfere with the opposition’s concentration in the heat of a “promising attack”. It didn’t work for John Cleese in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.  Cleese’s character (a French soldier) was trying to deter King Arthur from entering a French-held castle in England, and shouted from the castle ramparts, “I fart in your general direction…”—in an outrageous French accent, of course! (It was the livestock fusillade that repelled the ensuing attack, by the way.)

But despite all this, the official who refereed the game in question deemed the action to be unsporting behaviour. Heck—if this kind of interpretation of the rules sticks, what’s to stop a team from nobbling its opponents with fart powder and then getting them all sent off?

Sending wind forth from the anus (Oxford Dictionary definition circa 1944) is hardly premeditated behaviour (unless you’re Le pétomane). It’s not like soccer players say to each other, “I think I’ll eat a couple of cans of baked beans before the game lads. You never know when you’ll get the opportunity to fart at someone.” So why on earth would it be deemed a cardable sin? (I wonder if Le pétomane ever played soccer. Now he was one person who could have been accused of delivering a deliberate fart.)

A member of the opposing team heard the offence being committed from “a good distance away”. He’s quoted as saying “it’s the strangest thing I’ve seen on a pitch…” The BBC report takes this to refer to the punishment rather than the offence, so it seems the only person causing a stink was the referee.

Since there is frequent talk of having a separate Olympics for athletes who use banned substances, perhaps there could be a separate league for flatulent footballers. Maybe there’s even a chance that they could play Blow Football.

All joking aside though, soccer is plagued with drama queens faking injuries following a tackle—this is a much more pressing problem for the game than any number of flatulent footballers. Everyone passes gas, even (insert name of your favourite world leader). Neither the Pope, nor President Obama, nor Angela Merkel indulges in questionable slide tackles, yet they all toot.

I suspect that players in the upper echelons of football will drop one on a regular basis on the pitch. Presumably the crowd noise would cover it. I can picture the Pelés, Ronaldos and Beckhams of the world reading the BBC article and thinking “there but for the grace of God go I.”

I shudder to think what would happen if this interpretation of the Rules of the Game were to be universally applied. I fear that fans everywhere would begin to witness a new phenomenon—exploding soccer players—at which stage they could be carded for “making an unauthorised mark on the pitch”.

And at that point, soccer could no longer legitimately be called “The Beautiful Game”.