Presumably, everyone is up to speed by now about the reassuring news from Uefa, permanently trying to find different ways of curing football’s ills, that it has launched disciplinary action against Besiktas because of the pitch invader that briefly interrupted the club’s Champions League tie against Bayern Munich.
Even by Uefa’s standards, it’s a belter of a story given that it was actually a ginger cat who had wandered in off the streets to investigate what all these silly humans were up to. Unfortunately for Besiktas, nobody at Uefa appears to be aware that cats, as a general rule, do as they please, rather than what they are told. Nor is it particularly easy to understand what Besiktas should have done to avoid the charge of “insufficient organisation”. I mean, how does one organise the pussycat community of Istanbul these days? Should a saucer of milk and tin of Whiskas be kept by the dugout just in case? And, all silliness aside, could Uefa really not have taken the lead from Bayern – whose supporters voted the feline as their man of the match – rather than directing a moment of harmless fun towards its sanctions department. The case will be heard on 31 May and, knowing what we do about Uefa’s disciplinary tariff, don’t rule anything out – who could really be shocked if a stray kitty ends up costing Besiktas more in fines than a Nazi salute or racist chant would?
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