Wounded pride isn’t a good enough reason for flattening Richarlison

So Richarlison has kicked up an almighty fuss with his showboating, but why are broadcasters editorialising an idea that revenge is okay?

No Premier League weekend is complete without its fair share of controversy™, and the last didn’t disappoint. All it took was for Spurs substitute Richarlison to attempt some keepy-uppies in the closing stages of the match against Nottingham Forest and for Brennan Johnson to react by clattering into him and picking up a yellow card for his troubles.

So the battle lines were drawn, and there were three of them. On one side were those who felt that this sort of fancy-dannery could only have been greeted with a good old-fashioned English reducer. On the second were those who felt that the aforementioned keepy-uppies were a trifling matter and that Johnson’s reaction was a moment of hot-headedness for which he might have paid a higher price. And then there were those who felt that both the shithousery and the reaction to it were pretty funny, all part of the pantomime of modern Premier League football.

It was pretty clear which camp the Sky commentary team occupied. Jamie Carragher was incandescent at Richarlison’s impudence, and Martin Tyler agreed. Fans have been divided, largely on the grounds of their own tribalism or loyalty. So where are the lines, why is this particular incident causing such a fuss, and what of the broadcasters’ view?

Many sports exist with two sets of rules, one written and one unwritten, and it has been suggested that Richarlison broke one of football’s unwritten codes. But this idea that showboating in this way is somehow alien to football in this country is an obvious lie.

Don Revie’s Leeds United passing the ball around while Southampton forlornly chased their shadows in 1972 has entered into the game’s folklore in this country. “To say that Leeds are playing with Southampton is the understatement of the season,” as the BBC’s Barry Davies said at the time.

For an arguably more extreme version, consider Newcastle United doing this against Luton Town in a First Division match in April 1988. Newcastle won the game 4-0 and their tomfoolery was subsequently justified as a response to what Luton had done to Newcastle earlier in the season, Luton won by the same margin at Kenilworth Road. Regrettably, no footage of this is readily available. More recently, there was this, from Wayne Rooney for Manchester United at Everton.

It is both completely understandable and…