Football Dissected

New signing Mido made his debut for Middlesbrough, but that didn’t really mean much in the beginning when Fulham took the lead. Middlesbrough were ripped apart at the back for the goal and, even though Brian McBride injured himself while scoring, he did score. Middlesbrough didn’t really look threatening going forward in the first half with Mido the only one coming close with his fine effort on goal. Then in a seemingly freak accident Hameur Bouazza injured his shoulder and he was replaced by Clint Dempsey who soon laid off Healy only for the shot from the Northern Ireland striker to be well saved. But Fulham had lost two of their starters in just one half.

But then the second half roared on. The Fulham home crowd were expectant – they were in the lead after all. The crowd wanted another goal from their team – except Mido had other ideas. With a powerful left-footed drive, Mido smashed the ball towards goal and keeper Warner, who made a howler in the rain-bombarded midweek game against Bolton, made another howler, although he would be hard pressed to blame the weather this time. The ball hit his arms and bounced off into the bottom left-hand corner of the net. A lucky goal for Mido on his debut you could argue.

And Middlesbrough could have made it 2. The Fulham back four kept a very high and they almost paid the price for it as ex-Arsenal man Jérémie Aliadière broke forward onto a through ball. One on one with the keeper, there seemed to be no way Aliadière couldn’t score. But there was. Aliadière went past the on rushing Warner only to find that Zat Knight had caught up with him. Knight fought hard for the ball and in the process the referee deemed the Middlesbrough striker to have fouled the 6-foot defender before putting the ball into the back of the net. Yet what Middlesbrough could not do, Fulham could not do better.

Brilliant passing and movement from Fulham resulted in the ball arriving to the feet of Clint Dempsey. Almost a tap-in and Dempsey from less than six yards out does the impossible. He misses it. And Fulham looked to pay the price for that miss when Middlesbrough got their second and the winner. With defenders all around him Aliadière used his quick feet to break free from midfield to the right wing with the ball. Turning back, one quick look up. Lee Cattlemole was breaking into the box and Aliadière played the simplest of balls to the English midfielder while Carlos Bocanegra got his feet in a tangle thinking he was going to play Cattlemore onside. The young promising England midfielder made sure it was number two for Middlesbrough with a beautiful finish.

Then deep into injury time Fulham gave one last shot at trying to get an equaliser. Unlike Dempsey earlier, David Healy’s close-range effort was on target and Mark Schwarzer got his body behind the shot, only after it crossed the line. Schwarzer then threw the ball away. The goal, disallowed by the officials, just adds to the call for goal-line technology which is already used in similar degrees in tennis, cricket and rugby. Middlesbrough you could say got out of jail and it was more bad luck for Fulham than anything else with losing McBride and Bouazza in the first half and not getting the goal that replays clearly showed crossed the line, which would have given them a hard-earned point.