So the inevitable happened – Wayne Rooney has had his England ban reduced to two games, the third game ban suspended for four years.
As a Manchester City fan who considers Rooney to have fewer good points to his character than the love child of Piers Morgan and Kelvin Mackenzie (if such a thing were possible), as a football fan who has fallen out of love with the England team and its surrounding circus over the past few years, you wouldn’t expect me to be happy with the decision, or be supportive towards the decision.
After all, no one could argue the red card wasn’t deserved. Rooney kicked out needlessly at another player, it was violent conduct, and that’s a three-match ban the world over – or so I thought.
And he’s got form. A player whose red mist has let down club and country before, a player whose suspect temperament always hinted at a disciplinary nightmare round the corner.
So three matches is surely fair? Well maybe not. UEFA disciplinary procedures are different to the FA’s, so you can’t really compare the two. A whole host of journalists are claiming now the FA have set a terrible precedent by appealing Rooney’s ban and that they will now be open to appeals every time a player is given a 3-match ban. But they miss the fact that the two organisations run different disciplinary procedures, due to the different nature of domestic and international football. There is no set three-match ban for this sort of offence with UEFA – they have disciplinary panels that assess bans, and can reduce them – as they did with Rooney, and as they have done before with other players.
Already managers are moaning too, Kenny Dalglish being the first to also predict clubs contesting domestic three games bans. The FA will quite rightly point out that their bans run under a different organisation, under a different process, and thus there is no comparison to be made. The constant flow of club football demands a different process, a different rule-book.
I don’t know what argument the FA took in the appeal, as they have no intention of revealing such information, though they will have definitely cited the example of Andrei Arshavin, who had his ban reduced to two games in similar circumstances prior to Euro 2008. Either way, despite everything, I agree with the FA’s stance, and I agree with the length of ban, if not the way it was eventually decided.
My main argument is straight-forward, if not necessarily a very popular one. It is that having similar punishments for domestic and international games is not fair. A three match domestic ban has far less impact than a three match international ban. Domestically, a player might be out of action for a fortnight. An international ban can leave a player in the wilderness for a large chunk of a year, and as we saw with Rooney, could wipe out participation in a whole tournament. This doesn’t seem fair to me, and punishments should be more proportional. Yes, getting a ban just prior to the finals of a tournament could be seen as bad luck (or timing), just as getting banned for an FA Cup final would be, but getting banned for three matches during a qualification campaign would still see you off international duties for up to half a year (for games of consequence at least). The FA have invited criticism by appealing Rooney’s ban, as they seem to condone violent conduct, going against everything they preach about “fair play” on the pitch. But if they hadn’t appealed, they would have been slammed in the press anyway. Any FA would have appealed, as it was in their interest, and the fans’ interest to do so. After all, even the player Rooney kicked thought the ban was too harsh.
Rooney was stupid to kick out at the opposition player, as he has been stupid many times before. He cannot bemoan the red card he got, and he cannot bemoan a suspension – but three matches was too harsh in my opinion – the route to getting it reduced may have been flawed, a route involving a campaign by our Football Association until they got their way, but the end result was fair. The length of a sporting ban, be it for violent conduct, accumulation of cards, taking a banned substance or pushing a referee to the ground, is not a set amount laid out in some magical rule book deep in the vaults of FIFA HQ. A ban should enforce the sufficient punishment for the crime committed. Rooney deserves no sympathy for his various misdemeanours, but missing what could be two-thirds of England’s Finals campaign is to me a punishment that fits the crime.
[ad_pod id=’unruly-2′ align=’left’]