Ban the Blade!
Metatarsal injuries are increasingly common in football, today, no thanks to "improved" stud "technologies." What I cannot fathom is why they let the blade into the game in the first place. It has caused too many knee and now a growing number of sidelining foot injuries to our athletes.
Who can recall watching Robert Pires' (Arsenal, France) knee come out of joint in front of the sideline cameras on a sticky pitch, or Djabril Cisse's (Liverpool, France) lower leg bones break in two like a match-stick, both owning to the "progress" of boot technology.
Michael Owen (Newcastle United, England) just hobbled off the pitch on Saturday with a broken 5th metatarsal. It was not a stepping on (not a studs-based injury) but looked like Owen jammed it under Spurs keeper Paul Robinson's knee in a desperate lunge on a 50-50 ball just before the break (not long after Tainio put Spurs ahead with a nice volley).
This is a similar injury sustained at different times by Roy Keane (Manchester United, The Republic of Ireland), Steven Gerrard (Liverpool FC, England), Wayne Rooney (Manchester United, England), David Beckham (Real Madrid, England) and Gary Neville (Manchester United, England) major footballing artists.
Adidas, Puma, Nike...take them away, anyway!
Celtic
As of the date of your blog - 1st Jan 06 - Roy Keane is a registered player with Celtic, not for Manchester United.
You could have said "formerly Manchester United", as he was with ManU when his injury occured.
Posted by: Keano | January 07, 2006 at 12:45 PM
Keano you're completely right but this is not essential to the article, but thanks fot the precision anyway.
Posted by: marc | January 09, 2006 at 03:02 PM