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Newly promoted Stuttgart faced Liverpool over the weekend in a friendly match in Austria. The match ended up being not so friendly when Stuttgart forward Erik Thommy received a push from Joe Gomez that sent him reeling into the advertisement boards. The impact fractured Thommy’s elbow, and he'll now be out for several weeks.
I will warn you that this video is not for the faint of heart as the injury is a bit grim.
VfB Stuttgart confirm Erik Thommy has suffered a fractured elbow after this push into the advertisement board by Joe Gomez pic.twitter.com/Dt1npFKHBB
— OnlyFootballClips (@OnlyFootballCl1) August 23, 2020
Blame Gomez all you like for the shove in a FRIENDLY match, but my real question is why the hell are the advertisement boards so close to the field? I have always wondered this in my years of watching soccer.
Another horrific incident with an ad board happened when the USMNT faced Argentina at the 2016 Copa America. Ezequiel Lavezzi got obliterated when he went up to control the ball but was unaware of the ad board lurking nearby.
How is this advertising effective to begin with? Up yours, Sprint. Your service being so God-awful that you had to team up with T-Mobile to compete is one thing — taking out Lavezzi for no good reason is taking it too far. Thankfully your company’s advertisement team wasn’t full of scumbags and didn’t make a “you’ll FLIP out for our new Sprint family plan! Even Lavezzi fell head over heels for it” commercial.
In all seriousness, the billboards being five-feet away from the touchline is an unnecessary hazard to players. What are players supposed to do when they are running at full speed to make a play and given no time to slow down before careening into a billboard? The boards are also an obnoxious height, where it will either blow out a player’s knee or send them flying into the stands like Gabriel Agbonlahor.
Seriously, push the stupid things back five more feet. If they had been, then Thommy would be able to start the season for Stuttgart. Instead he was ironically shoved into a billboard advertising “Engelbert Strauss,” a safety equipment manufacturer. The irony is unreal.
Liverpool won the friendly 3-0 with goals from Roberto Firmino, Naby Keïta and Rhian Brewster.
