It is not exactly anything new for football clubs -- any football club, and especially our own spotlessly shiny
Manchester City -- to be accused of shabby manoeuvring and low-hand
skullduggery with its managers, so FA Cup final weekend's inglorious
tribute to Roberto Mancini and the many thousands of hours he has put in
toward the Good Cause should not really have come as much of a shock.
Exactly a year on -- to the very day, let it be said -- from the
greatest moment in any City supporter's lifetime, the air is full of the
sound of tutting and expletives being offloaded into the night sky
left, right and centre. Roberto Mancini has left the building with the
wailing and gnashing of teeth loud and clear behind him. The Italian
leaves in his wake a stream of distraught supporters, shocked at the
brutality of the modern game and its lust for immediate success.
- Marcotti: Mancini's halted progress at Man City
- Brewin: City make no case for Mancini's defence
- Pellegrini favourite for City job
- WhoScored: Stats support Mancini sacking
- Jolly: Man City gamble with Mancini sacking
- Gallery: Mancini at City
In the whirring vortex of such news, it is difficult to see the wood
for the trees, but let us for a moment try to take the man, his
accomplishments and people's reaction thereto as our starting points.
In the maelstrom of innuendo and bleating, of finger pointing and
gesticulating that we now find ourselves dispatched to, it is always the
rational that is first to be dispensed with. That this storm of words
was permitted to hit the nation's presses before the FA Cup
final is borderline criminal, especially for a club whose appearances in
these festive occasions can still be counted using the old upturned
tree sloth and his three dirty little flea-infested fingers. Whether the
news was squeezed out or escaped all by itself, the timing was
legendary in its inappropriateness.
Roberto Mancini is a dignified man, who has often appeared ill at
ease with the spit and flotsam that comes as part of the English
football existence. He is, of course, Italian, so let us not pretend
that he has not seen a few cut-throat shenanigans down through the
years. He is no wet-behind-the-ears novice, after all. From Machiavelli
to the Medicis, the Italian powerhouses have always been able to handle
themselves, and Mancini is hewn from tough stock.
His departure now, with the papers falling over themselves to take a
peek at Manuel Pellegrini and his credentials, smacks more than a
little of the same ugly dustcloud kicked up around Mark Hughes when
Mancini himself was supposedly waiting in the wings to take over.
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