I disagree, there needs to be some understanding of the situation the players were in. This is taken into account in law, why not for sport?
Even if I were to accept you drawing parallels to the judicial system, I'm struggling to understand what you mean by 'taken into account in law', if you were to give specific examples maybe I could comment but otherwise I think that circumstances are only taken into account if it effects the intrinsic nature of the crime.
However, even the above rests on the assumption that the comparisons to civil law are applicable here, which I do not think in the slightest. The 'crime' after all, was just shouting abuse amongst other things at a referee for a sports match, something which is probably simulated and regularly exceeded up and down any alcohol-consuming country every Saturday night, the vast majority of which is not deemed sufficient enough to be reported by the police, let alone acted upon.
But similarly remember that what preceeded these acts are a man dressed in black blowing his whistle and telling eleven highly-paid athletes in blue that he thinks the decision should go to other eleven highly-paid athletes in yellow, those with the seven-figure salaries in blue disagreeing. If you were to bring up a comparison of the referee 'robbing' Chelski, as I have a feeling you might do, and claim that just as you physically attacking some hoodie running off with your Phillips plasma-screen is justified in the eyes of the law, the seven-figure salary brigade headed up by Didier is 'justified' in hassling the ref, then I really don't know whether to start with the disagreements.
The right to property may be enshrined in law and in the constitutions of most states across the globe, but I don't think the 'right' to a Champions League Final place is quite up there in that respect yet, but who knows it might be in the EU pipelines somewhere. The only way this assertion would have applied is if the Norwegian snooped around the Stamford Bridge dressing room at half-time and helped himself to Drogba's wallet and Bosingwa's eyebrow grooming kit, and the players were acting to get their property back. But unfortunately, as we know, they were not and were merely complaining that decisions did not go there their way and that they really, really, wanted to go to Rome that year. Summarily, the referee did not 'rob' anyone.
The 'law' of that pitch is FIFA/UEFA's and unless it interferes with civil law in some way (like crowds getting out of control, or tackles with 'intent' that a club may actually consider pressing charges on), that law is the only one in existence within those ninety minutes and no tenets of that overarching law should come into play unless that law itself does. The law states that the referee should not be verbally or physically encroached upon, nowhere does it add the postfix 'unless he's had a shocking game or you're really, really angry'. There is a principle involved, and yes it should be that way, the only way the referee diminishes that principle is if he physically or verbally abused the players himself, he does not diminish it through his 'performance' as the principle does not relate to that.
Even if a functional sense, with all other arguments aside, the players actions do not make sense. The referee can't make retrospective decisions (unless he's quick about it, like at the Confederations Cup against Egypt, eh?), and it's not like if you break a decibel limit in his ear-drums you automatically get the decision dropped, and if the law were changed to allow 'the situation' to bear on how the players were treated after, all this does is firstly show that abusing the referee is not an unadulterated law, and secondly that if you are going to have a go at him, you better make it timely and worth your while.
You can technically 'understand' why grown men cried that day, but in the 'what's-that-smell-oh-it's-that-*****-dog-again' sense, not the 'brave-freedom-fighters-overcoming-tyranny' kind of way; you know why one thing led to another, but that doesn't diminish the crime.
you're like John Terry after the game, "had a million penalties turned down"
