On Monday Eduardo’s two match European ban was overturned by UEFA, in a move that concluded three weeks of poor decisions and media hype.

The striker was given the punishment after appearing to deceive the referee during a Champions League qualifying match with Celtic. However, as the football betting odds predicted, Arsenal successfully appealed against the ban on the basis that there was contact between Eduardo and the opposition goalkeeper.

The incident generated a huge amount of media attention and Gunners boss Arsene Wenger believes that the hype influenced UEFA’s decision.

“This case was suddenly the highlight of the whole media in Europe, but you know the media can be like that.

“Sometimes they choose somebody and they say ‘let’s do him’ and everybody jumps on the wagon. It is like that and you have to deal with it but that doesn’t mean that we have to deal with paranoia.

“It became an extremely attractive [story] but, as I always said from the start, they hadn’t chosen the right case.”

Wenger had always maintained that the original ban was “deeply flawed” and many of experts throughout the footballing world agreed with him.

The most significant questions related to the seemingly inconsistent nature of the punishment. Very few players have been retrospectively banned for diving and so no real precedent had been set, therefore it was only natural that Wenger and Arsenal felt that Eduardo was being made an example of.

There were also concerns over the legality of any such ban, as the player would only have received a yellow card during the match if the referee had deemed him to have dived.

What is clear is that UEFA need to do something new to combat diving and in doing so they should learn from the mistakes made in the Eduardo case. Wenger is in full support of future action:

“People have to accept this does not change anything to do with diving at all. In this case, it was not clear enough to convict Eduardo but we still have to fight against diving all together.”

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 17th, 2009 at 11:03 AM and is filed under Arsenal, Arsène Wenger, Champions League, Eduardo. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.