Saturday, November 10, 2007

What's harder: Parenting or Barca Getting a Win on the Road?

That's my question today.

Barca's record on the road is terrible - zero wins in 6 outings, and today was the latest lame attempt at Getafe, which is a cellar dweller. It's sad to see a team with as much talent as Barca perform so poorly.

They did get a couple bad calls, like the first Yellow card to Toure, which was a total dive. And then when Henry was in on goal and they called offside, but his shot went wide anyway.

Speaking of Yellow cards, I think of that a lot in terms of parenting. Yellow card is a warning, Red card and you're out. Usually it goes in that order - a player gets a Yellow and, usually, they shape up and play nice the rest of the game. If they get a second Yellow, that amounts to a Red, and they're out. Rarely does the ref give a player a straight Red. There are a couple things that will draw it, like going in hard on the keeper when he has the ball, but if it's play out on the pitch, you've got to do something really blatant and dangerous to get a straight red.

So, I sort of gave my daughter a straight Red today - it's hard to know when being firm crosses the line into heavy handedness. Here's the sit. She had just come back from a nice time with her Mom, Grandma and little brother looking at Gingerbread houses, and they'd gone to Krispy Kreme afterwords. And earlier, I took her for ice cream cuz she had done a really good job being a gracious hostess to little girl about 1-2 yrs her junior that lives in our cul de sac.

After they got back, she wanted to go play with that little girl at her house - I said ok and took her down. Her parents said that she was having a friend over to play in a bit, but that Sarah could stay and play for a little bit.

The guy was building a ramp for his dogs from their back deck to their back yard, and he had a long 2X4 leaning on their side fence and coming down into their side yard. Their little girl started to walk up it, which looked pretty dangerous, and her mom told her to stop, and she did. Sarah saw her doing it and started to walk over to te board and I said "don't walk up that board," and what did she do? Of course, she took two steps up the board and then hopped off.

That drew a straight Red. I said, ok, that's it, we're going home. To which my daughter started balling and carrying on. I felt like kind of a jerk, and I immediately started to wonder if I had been too hasty. But, I thought it would be worse to reward her tantrum by letting her stay.

What'cha think?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

El problema con el Barça es complejo, pero la clave del asunto está en Ronaldinho. Como jugador de élite está acabado, y su mala forma y maneras contiaga al resto y condiciona a todo el equipo. Cuando a principio de temporada jugamos sin él, y con Iniesta en su sitio, el Barça hizo los mejores partidos de la temporada. Creo que la solución pasa por desprendernos de Ronaldinho (y quizás también Henry), y poner a jóvenes en su sitio, como Bojan o Giovanni.
En lo referente a Sarah, creo que hoy en día los padres sacamos demasiado pocas too fee red cards.

Greg Wallace said...

vale - acepto el argumento sobre Ronaldinho, pero eso tambien explica porque no pueden ganar fuera de casa?

y gracias por el consejo sobre Sarah - sabes que los padre siempre se dudan...

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