The History of the Horror Tackle

I will not be showing any pictures of any broken legs on this post, look it up on Google if you have a solid stomach.

Almost a week since Mullan's "horror tackle" on Seattle Sounder's midfielder Steve Zakuani and people are still trying to recover from the severity and horrendous nature of the tackle that snapped Zakuani's leg straight in half.
But this is, unfortunately, the nature of the game we love.

A couple of years ago there was major controversy in the EPL (English Premier League) that the FA (Football Association in England) was not doing enough to protect their players, something that Arsene Wenger has been arguing about for 3 years. The controversy came after one of the worse tackles that I've personally ever seen, i'm excluding David Busst's career-ending injury because I didn't witness it live. Anyway, like I said, a couple years ago I was watching Arsenal vs. Birmingham City and I witnessed a very, very sad thing to see. I saw one man (Martin Taylor) break another man's leg (Eduardo da Silva). I really would prefer to not describe the injury, as i'm sure many of you are OK with.

This however, began a debate that is still a hot topic around England and Europe, and something Arsenal has had to go through an astounding three times, Aaron Ramsey being the latest of the three. Other top professionals in the world of soccer have undergone the same terrifying injury and then the slow, painful recovery. Arguably, altering their careers forever, i.e.(Henrik Larsson, Djibril Cisse, and Preston Burpo).

Now the same freak accident that we've unfortunately seen one too many times in soccer, has happened again, as stated above. And now, Brian Mullan finds himself, according to mlssoccer.com, distraught and out of MLS action for 10 games. He won't be available for the Rapids until June 26th. 

The best explanation I can try and give for these types of "freak-injuries", is this:
This is somewhat of a natural occurrence in the soccer world (believe it or not, soccer is a contact sport), that in most occasions occur on accident and without pre-meditation.

Obviously there are things players can do to avoid getting in these types of challenges, here are a few:

• For starters, no two footed challenges, ever. 
• Also, never go after players standing legs when making a tackle. 
• Furthermore, the player with the ball at his feet needs to stay on his toes, to avoid injury.
• Stricter refereeing policies, after all their job is to protect the players. 
• Referees need to realize when the game is getting out of hand.     

I realize that sometimes, players cannot avoid this. Sometimes these tackles are simply just part of the game.

But, if players and referees can try to follow these easy guidelines we will hopefully never have to see sensational footballers, like Zakuani, experience a season ending injury again.