Wayne Rooney’s career has been far from perfect, but who can honestly say they have gone through life without making a mistake?
Wayne Rooney’s career has been far from perfect, but who can honestly say they have gone through life without making a mistake? Mistakes make us who we are and we carry them through life to better ourselves and learn from. But, there are only so many mistakes someone can make, and in the case of Wayne Rooney, he just doesn’t seem to learn from the endless list of mistakes he’s made.
However, despite all the mistakes Wayne Rooney has made, UEFA have made a huge one themselves. Or, are they simply showing their true colours towards England?
Before qualifying for the European Championships began, UEFA stated that any red card received by a player would not then follow through to the championships this summer. However, in mysterious fashion, UEFA decided to abolish this rule in the case of Wayne Rooney and slap him with a confusing three-match ban. Rather surprisingly, after thorough investigation I could not find any comment made by UEFA themselves regarding this issue. Yet, when you look at this issue more deeply, the ban isn’t as surprising as first thought. The president of UEFA is none other than Michel Platini, who is notorious for not being, shall we say, the biggest advocate of English football.
He has been known to attack the Premier League, stating that it is “ultralibérale” as well as its (free-market) commercial approach, the takeovers of its clubs by rich individuals and the preponderance of foreign players”. Yes Mr Platini, you are certainly right in saying this, as the Premier League is in fact the only league in the world in which foreign players play.
He also believes that the Premier League is the root cause of debt in European football; he obviously doesn’t pay much attention to the likes of Barcelona and Real Madrid then. He has also branded English players ‘cheats’, again once forgetting the debacle that unfolded in Italy not too long ago which saw the likes of Juventus relegated. The hypocrisy and evident envy towards English football could easily lead a cynic to imagine that Michel Platini was possibly the mastermind behind this ban on Wayne Rooney, in an attempt to hinder the chances of England in the European Championships this summer.
But, we must remember that UEFA aren’t the only ones to blame for this, as is all too often, Wayne Rooney can be the cause of his own downfall, and in this case he makes it very easy for people to come to this conclusion.
It goes without saying that Wayne Rooney is one of the best talents in world football, but he has managed to anger and frustrate us all at the best of times. He has displayed petulance and uncontrolled anger throughout his whole career, taking examples such as clapping in the face of the referee at Villareal, stamping on his then team-mate Cristiano Ronaldo and more recently swearing into the camera lense during a televised game. He has been forgiven for all of these and left to continue his career in the hope that each act of stupidity is to be his last. Now I don’t know how much of an influence the coverage his dad had in the media earlier that day had over his actions in Montenegro, but the behaviour Wayne Rooney displayed was simply inexplicable.
I know there are thousands of football fans that would agree with me in saying that I’ve simply had enough of his immature antics on the football pitch. He is 25 years of age and has been playing in the Premiership since the age of 16; he should by now have learnt how to cope in high-pressure situations and the scrutiny of the media; yet there is no evidence to suggest this. Something has got to make the penny eventually drop with Wayne Rooney.
And that’s where the actions taken by UEFA against Wayne Rooney come in. Are they in fact trying to teach Wayne Rooney a lesson we wish we could? Will this in turn be beneficial to his career? Maybe, just maybe, the potential threat of missing out on a European Championship may lead Rooney to putting an end to his foolish antics and one day grow up.
