Footballing hard man turned actor Vinnie Jones has cheekily suggested that Liverpool attacker Mohamed Salah went to the ‘drama school’ he never went to.
Football has obviously changed from Jones’s day and age; some of the tackles the former Wimbledon man got away with would be met with a red card these days. With that said, Jones does believe that the penalty won by Salah against Cardiff City on Sunday was legitimate.
“How long was the bear hug going to go on?,” he told talkSPORT. “The lad has got both his arms around Salah and he has thrown himself to the floor in the end, but he’s had enough of it. For me, it’s a definite penalty.
“Salah has thrown himself on the floor, but come on, the Cardiff player had his arms all over him. I think he was terrified of him unleashing a shot on goal. Salah might have gone to the drama school I never went to!”
OPINION
Jones, perhaps surprisingly, delivers a pretty reasoned assessment of the incident here. It was definitely a penalty for Liverpool, it’s difficult to see how people are arguing that fact. Sean Morrison was all over him. He had both hands clasped around Salah’s waist and was prohibiting his movement in the penalty box. Really, Salah could have gone down at any point during that sequence. When he did eventually go to ground he did so extremely theatrically, of course, but the foul was made and that is what matters at the end of the day. Salah has a penchant for going down too easily, that’s true, but if a foul occurs in the box then it’s a penalty, no matter how theatrically or otherwise the player might go down. So as Jones says, it was a definite penalty, but at the same time Salah was far too dramatic with his fall and that’s why this has become a topic of conversation on Monday.
