"However, since the defendant's back obscured the constable's view of the knife entering the body, I have no option but to direct you to acquit on the charge of murder. You are free, of course, to convict him of common assault."
The survival of this deranged disciplinary anomaly after a similar incident caused outrage last season seems due to vested interests. The cabal of groups known as FA "stakeholders" – the Premier League, the Professional Footballers' Association and bodies representing referees and managers – must individually sanction any increase in the retrospective power to punish. They did not, and the Alice in Wonderland status quo persists.
For the obvious solution to this and other such dementias, we must gaze across the Atlantic. What the game desperately needs is a football commissioner on the dictatorial lines of the US commissioner for baseball, though in our case chosen not by the club owners but in a public referendum. Such a tyrant would have resolved this business in literally one minute.
He, or she, would have watched the footage (30 sec); barked "Get me that bozo at the FA" at his PA (5 sec); said "The Commish here. I've seen the Torres tantrum, and he's banned three games. [10 sec]. Oh, and by the way, tell Mourinho that any nonsense, and I'll ban him from the touchline for the entire season [14 sec]." Click, brrrr (1 sec).
Finding the ideal candidate would not be easy, because the post requires the delicate sensibilities of the LA law enforcer Harold "Dirty Harry" Callahan, the genteel collegiate approach of the latter period Mrs Thatcher, and the clemency of the late Judge Jeffreys.
In the unavoidable absence of Joseph Stalin, one would have to consider Borwn if he was willing to wean himself off that draining bi-annual visit to Parliament. Other promising candidates might include Joe Arpaio, the Arizonan sheriff who feeds prisoners weevils; Mrs Jenny McCririck ("Booby") who may have capacious stores of repressed rage to pour, like molten lava, on infantile male egos; and, assuming he would be happy to tear miscreants to pieces and pass summary judgment in place of Thought For The Day, John Humphrys.
On the "If you can't do it yourself, get an Italian" principle that worked so spiffingly with Don Fabio Capello, however, my personal preference would be the man Villas-Boas would call "almost the hardest, almost the baldest, and almost the greatest" football official who ever lived.
Send for Pierluigi Collina.
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