The Craig Bellamy Definition of “Self-Defense”

By: Taylor Rockwell | September 22nd, 2009

During Sunday’s Manchester Derby, Craig Bellamy managed to do just about everything possible to make United fans hate every fiber of his being. Firstly, he scored two rather nice goals to keep the City team in the match. Then he elected to celebrate the second goal by doing a thoroughly inappropriate airplane celebration (a reference to the Munich Disaster, if you didn’t know). However, his most controversial act came when he confronted a pitch-invading fan. I’ll post the video below, but here are the key points:

1) Michael Owen scored a goal in the 96th minute to give Manchester United the win
2) Just before the resulting kickoff, a fan ran into the pitch (presumably in celebration of the goal)
3) The fan was predictably rugby tackled by police and was subdued
4) At this point, Bellamy elected to jog over, exchange some heated words with the restrained fan, and then elected to slap him in the face.
5) The United players and the referees then came over and there was a minor skirmish.

Now, obviously the fan had no reason to be on the pitch, and deserved to be tackled (hard). However, why Bellamy elected to jog over and directly involve himself in the incident is a mystery to most people… except of course for those already familiar with Bellamy’s rather infamous history. Of course there are other explanations, like the one offered up by Mark Hughes. The City manager defended his player, stating that he was simply acting in self-defense.

“All Craig has done is go over there and tell the guy to get off the pitch,” said Hughes. “Craig wasn’t privy to how much time was left to enable us to get back into the game. The guy made an aggressive move towards him and Craig wanted to get him off the pitch. Craig just put a defensive hand out to push him away. You can never be quite sure what is going to happen in those situations.”

As the video shows, the guy was obviously a threat to Bellamy as he was 1) a good 20 yards away from him and 2) already restrained, so why not jog over and vent a little frustration? I mean, clearly that constituted self-defense. If you find yourself a bit skeptical of this defense, then here are some other obvious examples of self-defense throughout history.

1) Americans v Buffalo – Clearly, the now endangered animal was a threat to America’s frontier settlers, and required immediate action (read: slaughter).

2) Jack the Ripper v Prostitutes – They were loitering in his neighborhood, threatening his well-being… clearly something needed to be done.

3) Eric Cantona v Crystal Palace Fan’s Face – The owner of said face was obviously threatening Cantona’s existence (from 20 yards away behind stewards and signs), so King Eric pursued the only logical course of action and went Jet Li all over his face.

I’m actually more bothered by the airplane celebration than I am the slap, but the absurd defense being offered is equally annoying. Obviously, any manager will do whatever he can to defend his player, but sometimes one risks sacrificing your own credibility/rationality for the sake of loyalty. Not sure if that’s good or bad, but in this instance, it remains slightly bothersome.