Mancini tries to inform the referee as to the decision to be made

Is it just me or does it seem that by the year… no wait, scratch that . . . by the week, yes does it seem that by the week footballers are getting more petty and more hyocritical? If it isn’t players like Wayne Rooney demanding a transfer one season in order to get a pay rise only to score a goal last week and celebrate by kissing the badge, or Arsene Wenger complaining that a Swansea player dived to win a penalty against his club, considering what his club have done in the past, then it’s Roberto Mancini and his waving of imaginary red cards and other players having the cheak to complain about it, or the same man moaning about two-footed tackles on opponents…

Just last week Manchester City boss, Mancini, vowed never to wave an imaginary card again after doing so towards Liverpool defender Martin Skrtel, yet in their very next game — a 1-0 win over Wigan Athletic last night — a handball by Maynor Figueroa — had the Italian storming off his bench waiving his hand towards the ref in a gesture that told anyone who was watching what decision he thought the referee should make.

Wayne Rooney, the badge kissing, money loving Manchester United forward took to Twitter last night to ask, “Was manchini [sic] asking for a red card???” as if he didn’t know what that universal football act of waving ones hand in a card holding like manor towards the referee meant? Or he could have been asking a retorical question. This is the same Rooney who was seen howling at referee Chris Foy when one of Mancini’s defenders, Vincent Kompany, put in a hard tackle on United’s Nani during both clubs’ FA Cup third round encounter little over a week ago.

“I did it because Wayne Rooney did this,” explained Mancini after the match, to which my mom might suggest then that if Wayne Rooney were to stick his foot in the fire, would Mancini do the same? Of course, Roberto had a pre-planned answer to such a suggestion and laid it out in the same post-match intverview: “I am on the bench, it’s different,” he said resembling a seven year-old school kid. “When you are a player very near to the referee you can have more of an influence, I am on the bench and the referee cannot see me,” he added as if to suggest the fourth official who was right beside him when he did it, doesn’t count as a referee, except when they need to use him as an object to vent their fury at when the referee on the pitch makes a ‘bad’ decision.

The whole thing therefore goes round and round in circles as the rest of us pull our hair out. From moaning about an opponent committing a simular kind of dive that someone from your own team made the week before, to lambasing a referee for not sending off a player for a tackle that you go on to defend when your own player makes it the week after, to waving imaginary cards as if the game needs anymore bookings and sending off’s than it already has.

Football has proven itself to be a very hypocritical game and the [insert club colours here] tinted shades aren’t worn by just those in the stands. I’d much prefer that if players were going to dive and wave imaginary cards, they didn’t whine about others doing the same back.

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