Rod, good post but I dont buy the "all he did was defend his team mate" one bit.
The pre match wind up, the winking, the admission of wanting to leave England - that's not defending your team mate.
To me this is clear cut, he is not a good professional.
Right - say a German had stamped on Beckham? Would everyone be expecting Hargreaves to defend the German? Or to be complaining at the ref that his teammate was assaulted? Can you imagine the abuse Hargreaves would take if he sided with a German teammate?
Pre-match wind up - not nice, but it happens all the time.
The wink - about 2 minutes after the stamp... no-one knows what it was over apart from Ronaldo and whoever he was winking at. Seized on by moral authorites like Alan Shearer and Ian Wright, to help the agenda of blaming everything on Johnny Foreigner.
Admitting to wanting to leave... sorry? This marks someone as unproffessional? You'll want Gerard sacked then.
Seriously, the vilification of Ronaldo is well out of order. Add it to the ref who was forced into retirement after the Euro championships and we're starting to see a nasty pattern. Time for FIFA/UEFA to put the spotlight on the English press I think.
Rod, we cannot seriously blame the press for a lunatic who threatens to kill a referee! The Papers writing tripe and people reacting to them by threatening to kill a ref are miles away from each other.
You could be correct about everything you say about Ronaldo but IMHO it is more likely he tried some nasty gamesmanship that went a bit too far. Just my opinion.
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