You wouldn’t think so when you watch some football matches these days, but there is such a thing as a UEFA Respect Fair Play rankings table which is based on all UEFA competition matches played at club and national-team levels from 1 May 2013 to 30 April 2014. The table eventually seeing the top three counties be eligible for an extra club place in the first qualifying round of the 2014-15 Europa League, providing they all attain an average of 8.0 points or more, something which is being achieved by the top eleven countries in the table at present.
That extra club place for each country then goes to the first ranked Fair Play team in the top division, something, should England make it into the UEFA top three, which would probably see sixth placed Norwich City as the free place recipients given the current top five in the Premier League table are all clubs who may get into European competition via normal means as they are Liverpool, Manchester City, Arsenal, Tottenham and Everton. Meanwhile Stoke City are propping up the table, with Manchester United only three places above them in a lowly 17th spot.
It’s then worth a look at how the table is calculated in this country and there are certainly a couple of strange thing in there among the six methods of calculation. The amount of red and yellow cards picked up, respect towards opponents, respect towards the referee and behaviour of team officials (bad news for Alan Pardew) are all ones you would probably expect but positive play certainly raises an eyebrow, with it being described on the Premier League website thus: ‘This is designed to encourage attractive play that will increase the enjoyment of spectators.’
That scoring then breaks down into positive and negative points with positive being using attacking and not defensive tactics, speeding up the game, efforts to gain time (e.g. bringing the ball back into play quickly even if the team is in a winning position) and continuing to push for goals when in a winning position. On the other hand you lose points for slowing down the game, time wasting, tactics based on foul play and play-acting (simulation). The overall positive play points seeing Liverpool and Arsenal currently joint top in that column, while Fulham bring up the rear.
You do wonder how they work such things out, presumably people are armed with a stopwatch on the time wasting front, with the Premier League website just saying it is done by ‘delegates’, and that also counts for how they calculate the sixth method, which is behaviour of the public. Apparently all teams begin with a score of 5 points and a further 5 points can be added for verbal support in acceptable form and covert recognition of outstanding play by the opponents (their words not mine).
On the other hand a maximum of 5 points can be deducted for persistent foul and abusive language, persistent abuse of the officials’ decisions and aggressive and threatening conduct towards opposing fans. Sadly though that column doesn’t appear in the overall table, which is probably a sensible idea I suppose, although we can have a look at the behaviour of officials column in which Everton are top and Southampton are bottom, so there must be loudmouths on the bench for the Saints because Mauricio Pochettino always seems pretty restrained to me. The mind boggling even further when you see that Newcastle United and West Ham United come out joint best in the respect towards referee ratings.
The free Europa League place for any of these sides though is dependent of course on England finishing in the top three of the 54 countries in the table. That is a possibility too with England currently in fifth spot behind Finland, Norway, Sweden and France in a Fair Play table in which the Scandinavian countries always rank highly, with the top three at the end of it all last season also being Finland (3rd), Norway (2nd) and Sweden (1st). As for our nearer neighbours Scotland are currently 9th, the Republic of Ireland 14th but Wales are way down the rankings in 37th place, with Georgia currently ranked bottom, while the final UEFA Respect Fair Play rankings will be published in May.