The Rational Ref | Rational Ref: Why football players need to leave their handbags at home

Soccer is far more successful in promoting the idea of handbags to the world than either Louis Vuitton or Prada. This fashionable colloquialism describes spiky confrontations where the rowdy participants are not really serious about inflicting actual bodily harm on each other.

We see handbags all the time, where players scuffle with one another, call each other names, put their hands on necks and faces, and flick rude gestures.

Essentially, these asinine actions are non-threatening but each individual will have their own personal interpretation of what they deem to be aggressive, intimidating or provocative. When these personal interpretations differ wildly, things start to kick off and we have handbags or what referees officially call "mass confrontations".

Some players have thick skins and never rise to the bait, others will give as good as they get, a few will try to tell the referee what's going on, while others will overreact, which usually leads to a handbag melee.

Everyone wants to pressure referees to "lay down the rule of law" hard on their opponents, while simultaneously badgering the referee to be lenient with them.

Does this sound familiarly hypocritical in light of the Occupy Central movement where there have been plenty of handbags on the streets?

There were also plenty of handbags during Valencia's 1-0 loss to Barcelona last weekend. When Neymar went down theatrically following a challenge from Nicolas Otamendi, the Valencia defender felt the Barcelona forward was trying to cheat and bent down to remonstrate with him.

As Otamendi put his hand on Neymar's neck and stuck his head in his face for good measure, Neymar pushed his forehead forward, which subsequently led to Otamendi outdoing Neymar's theatrics by grabbing his own face as if he had been heavily struck. Other players joined in the handbags dance, as everyone shoved and shouted to get opponents sent off.