But the incident doesn't stop there for me, yes Rooney should be booked for petulant retaliation but he should have also been awarded a freekick. "You're crazy" I hear you saying, but hear me out...
Jordan Mutch showed no intention of going for the ball, he just "stood his ground" (basically put himself in Rooney's way) and obstructed the forward from having any cat in hell's chance of getting to the ball. What is he supposed to do to get the ball? There's nothing he can do without fouling Mutch.
It's one of the few ridiculous rules of football for me that what Mutch did wasn't a foul. There's shielding the ball in the football, and that's fine but the boundaries of what are legal in this department have just been stretched way out of proportion. You can get away with anything as a defending player. It's basically obstruction when it gets to the extent of what Mutch was doing on Sunday.
He's stopping Rooney from getting to the ball and is not going for the ball whatsoever himself, therefore it's a foul. If that was any other part of his body, ergo his foot- to perhaps trip Rooney up or block him off with his legs and Rooney falls over the flailing leg- a foul is given. And rightly so.
But when it comes to shielding the ball, things just get ridiculous and out of hand. Basically the attacking player is stopped from playing football unfairly; someone has got their body in the way and deliberately stopped the attacking player from getting to the ball without going for the ball himself. He's gone for the player. He's stopped the player moving forward and its a foul.
You get these shielding the ball to a ridiculous extent incidents in every game, but for me it has to be stamped out and finally seen for what it is: a foul. It's stopping a player from playing the game by stopping him from running forward to try to get the ball without the defending player even going for the ball himself.
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