A case for Morgan Gould In an incident of complete madness, or a “freak incident” as its maker resigned to call it, Morgan Gould has laid bare, to the unassuming public, his football genetic coordination or lack of it. The cries are getting louder by the day, and they got even louder when his punch on the Wits player reverberated around the world. Eyesbrows are raised about the referee’s inability to spot a blatant foul — to put it mildly — right in front of his shoestrings. A shock, but of more concern is the perpetrator’s outstretched punch to an innocent hack of ‘the Students’ who happened to jostle the ball with him. The consequence of this is that BidVest Wits were not impressed and have lodged a complaint with the League and its motherbody. Whilst on the other hand, the owners of the player concerned has issued statements indicating that they would take strict measures to disciplines him internally. However, not many are considering that Morgan Gould didn’t do this as a matter of technicality, per se. He didn’t inherit bad soccer genes on purpose. While playing for SuperSport United, and Jomo Cosmos, Morgan has always been a player who you’d bet he squeezed into the football furnace by his masculine and rough tackling propensity than football talents. If anything, he bayed for blood, lunging tackles, intimidating opponents, and all-together methods most used by rugby players. In the past, the football dynamics weren’t as nuanced as it is now. When he played for Jomo Cosmos, in those times, there was a specialisation necessity for any player to make it into the professional ranks. The football dynamics were one-dimensional. An attacking midfielder had to play like an attacking midfielder and do that job almost exclusively, nothing else. A defender had to kick the hell out of everybody, nothing else. A defender had to stop opponents (attackers), literally (Sure, Morgan was actually a striker, but converted to a defender by Jomo Sono, he wouldn’t have been close too prolific, perhaps he would have gone extinct.) Not to stop them from scoring. No. To stop them, bodily, in everyway possible. So Morgan fitted the bill. How you could pass the ball, and such technical requirements these days were of little importance then. Tactics also weren’t much emphasised. More or less, the game was more individualistic than it is now. After moving to SuperSport United, Morgan adjusted his game somewhat, but he was still the kung-fu master he had been trained to be, only with more muscles. He has an imbedded bodily harm mentality which will go with him until he hangs up his boots. He always tries to hide it, but not always successfully. With matches, more matches, at SuperSport not attracting much attention, he got away with many “freak incidents” than he may care to remember. Now that he is playing under a disco-light, where everybody has cast his eyes — even though they hardly fill-up the arena, but surely more eyes on the TV — his every movement is tracked. And so people get surprised to see his real skills or the lack thereof. What he did to Kebede, the poor Wits lad was brutal, sure, but this requires also some talent identification microscope. To start with, Morgan Gould’s body pasture doesn’t resemble a football type player. Many football players, of course, have got away with that. It is not only talent that let’s you in into professional football, I concede. And to end with, perhaps people are overestimating Morgan’s capabilities. His football prowess, on the natural ability of a footballer — let alone that of a professional footballer — is not the best and this may only highlight the fact that his genes aren’t exactly suited to football. He may be a Sportsman, but on such incidents as these, he must be excused for actually being lost into a wrong sport
Posted on: Fri, 15 Nov 2013 12:00:43 +0000
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