Should Eden Hazard Have Been Sent Off For Kicking Ball Boy?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVHVS26RBeM Last night, fans tuned in to Chelsea's trip to the Liberty Stadium to take on Swansea in the semi-final of the Capital One Cup. They were hoping to see if the home side could complete an unlikely win over the European Champions by emulating League Two side Bradford in dramatically reaching the final of the competition on February 24th. Instead, what they got was a fairly unspectacular 0-0 draw of which the main talking point was an off the field incident involving a ball boy. With the game running into its final 10 minutes and the home side clinging on to their 2-0 aggregate lead, the ball trickled out of play which seemed as though the Swansea ball boy would merely collect and return to the goalkeeper. Instead, the teenager, who has since been revealed as Charlie Morgan, fell on top of the ball after Hazard ran to pick it up for a speedier redistribution. The youngster then smothered the ball with his entire body, and the frustrated Belgian midfielder attempted to kick it from underneath him, but kicked Morgan in the ribs in the process. He was then handed a straight red card by referee Chris Foy and Chelsea completed the game with ten men. In the wake of the incident, Morgan's twitter feed was discovered which seemed to brag about planned disruptive behaviour at the game, proclaiming himself to be the king of the ball boys. tweet What we want to know is, was Eden Hazard right to attempt to retrieve the ball from the time waster, or was the teenager simply doing his job, and is a victim of Hazard's heavy-handed tactics? Watch the incident and complete our poll.

Contributor
Contributor

Joseph is an accredited football journalist and has interviewed nearly all of the current 20 Barclay's Premier League managers. He is also a correspondent for Bleacher Report and has written for Caught Offside and Give Me Football.