England and Manchester United’s Wayne Rooney has attracted a lot of unwanted attraction during their 3-1 victory over Preston North End in the fifth round of FA cup. With the victory, Manchester United will now face their premier league rivals Arsenal in their next round.
With Preston scoring in the second half, pressure was on the Red Devils and they did deliver with wonderful strikes from Ander Herrera and Fellaini. With 87 minutes on the clock, Preston keeper Thorsten Stuckmann came rushing out of his line to stop Wayne Rooney from scoring. Replays show that there was no contact with the keeper. Despite no contact from the keeper, Wayne Rooney won the penalty for United and scored from it putting the result beyond any doubt.
With the incident many former players, coaches split their opinion with some speaking for Rooney and the others criticizing his act. Roy Hodgson, the English manager came in defence of his skipper by saying,”No, not for me. I think he’s just taking evasive action there. If you are refereeing the game, I think in the run of play, without any of the replays we’ve just seen now so many times, I don’t think any of us refereeing the game in training would have said: ‘That’s not a penalty.’ The goalkeeper’s come out in that way, very rashly, he’s gone with both feet. Wayne’s touched the ball past him.”
Former Liverpool forward and analyst, Stan Collymore criticized Rooney for cheating and diving. He said;”Rooney shouldn’t be diving due to his position as captain of club and country. He toe-pokes the ball past the goalkeeper, who he knows is coming out quickly, and he dives. That’s cheating, we’ve had this debate a million times. When you wear that respect campaign armband, you owe it to the fans and the game not to do that. I’m bitterly disappointed, he is the England captain and Manchester United captain and he’s better than that.”
The Manchester United manager, Louis van Gaal did admit that they were lucky with Herrera’s goal as Rooney was in an offside position and the goal would have been discarded. He said,”In the first half we didn’t create many chances so that is why I changed the shape. That was I think why we make the goals in the second half. I think the first goal was a little lucky, the second goal was a training goal – fantastic – and the third goal was a penalty and the match was done. I have to give all the credit to the players because they have done again everything that was asked of them and the spirit in the team is unbelievable.”