Hi °C | Lo °C First UEFA, now the Football Association. I despair that authorities utterly fail to do their duty regarding misbehaviour on the field.
There’s no need to revisit Eduardo. I’ll be a very old man before another high-profile footballer is brought to book for simulation. But I caught my flight out of Manchester airport last Sunday night feeling sure that the FA would hold Craig Bellamy and Gary Neville properly to account for their actions at Old Trafford — Bellamy for ‘striking’ a supporter who’d idiotically run onto the pitch and Neville for celebrating United’s dramatic winner by running the length of the pitch to taunt City fans.
It’s ironic that I’d been ‘discussing’ Neville with car park stewards before the game. I’d suggested that the FA would, wrongly in my view, allow Adebayor to escape with a reprimand and fine (for what he did in the Arsenal match) since that’s all they’d done to Neville three years ago following a ‘celebration’ in front of Liverpool supporters.
But it beggars belief that Neville, effectively, gets away with it again and it’s even worse that the FA went along with the referee who’d “taken into account the emotion of the game” in regard to Bellamy.
Basically, players have a carte blanche to do what they like these days. Adebayor can sleep easy.
