Hazard vs Ball Boy

Let me start off by apologising that this topic is a couple of days late but i've just been getting my blog up and running and only just got round to writing my first post.

So, during the Capital One Cup semi-final 2nd leg between Swansea and Chelsea at the Liberty Stadium there was a very unfortunate incident involving Chelsea's Belgium midfielder Eden Hazard and a 17 year old Swansea Ball Boy. Around the 78th minute the ball ran out of play behind the Swansea goal for a goal kick, when the young boy in question went to retrieve the ball and then literally just fell over, smothering the ball slowing down the speed of the game. This is when Eden Hazard went over to the ball boy to try and speed up the return of the ball to play when he unnecessarily kicked the boy in the ribs to dislodge the ball the his grasp, leaving the boy in what looked like considerate pain, i will reiterate "what looked like". This resulted in the match official sending Eden Hazard off and reducing Chelsea to 10 men. So there's no denying that at first glance this incident looked horrendous and Hazard was totally in the wrong and deserved the red card........... Until it came to everyone's knowledge that the ball boy in question was 17 year old Charlie Morgan, who's the son of Swansea's largest shareholder. Before the game at the Liberty stadium Charlie tweeted "The king of all ball boys is back making his final appearance #needed #for #timewasting.”......... So what everybody thought was an innocent child it looks like he did deliberately slow down the return of the ball by falling over on top of the ball. And by all means i am not condoning what Hazard did as he should have never have kicked the ball boy but i don't think you can just blame Hazard and the ball boy must take some of the blame for the incident. Yes Hazard kicked the ball from under his ribs to dislodge it but did we really need the Oscar winning injury performance of Charlie too?? You can see the incident here. 

The positive of writing this post a couple of days late i guess is that there has been some fall out over the incident. It was brought to everyone's attention that Hazard and the ball boy apologised to each other and the ball boy wouldn't be pressing any other charges against the Chelsea player. Subsequently the Belgium midfielder has been charged with Violent Conduct but has the option to appeal the decision.

This very unfortunate incident did shadow what was an excellent display from Swansea that resulted in them progressing through to the Capital One cup final against underdogs Bradford City. But does this incident just add to a number of woes that Chelsea FC have at the present moment?