It’s funny how events in football always finds a way to go full circle, isn’t it? It happens often and it certainly did with Steven Gerrard’s rash actions at Anfield that saw him sent off shortly after coming on.
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It was just a few of weeks ago that Fernando claimed in an interview granted to the Daily Mail that he could not imagine his Manchester City team mates hounding a referee in the manner Chelsea FC did in the UCL semi-final second-leg against PSG that saw Zlatan Ibrahimovic getting sent off for a tackle on Oscar. Even his manager Manuel Pellegrini joined in the criticism of Chelsea’s actions and said his players would never do that either.
Later that weekend, his team mates, headed by the captain Vincent Kompany, were caught on camera surrounding the referee in the 1-0 defeat to Burnley. Ibrahimovic himself claimed that the Chelsea players “acted like babies” in the sending off incident, but he later acted like the real baby, throwing tantrums and swearing at everyone and everything within hearing distance after PSG’s surprise 3-2 defeat against Girondins Bordeaux.
On Sunday, in the thriller at Anfield between Liverpool and Manchester United, Steven Gerrard was red carded just 38 seconds after coming in as a substitute for a stamp on Ander Herrera. His dismissal basically won the match for United and may have ended Liverpool’s top four hopes this season. Martin Skrtel was also caught on camera while he stamped on David De Gea and later engaged in a heated exchange with him.
Incidentally, it was against Liverpool that Costa was charged and later banned for his alleged intentional stamp on Emre Can. He was later involved in a heated exchange with Steven Gerrard (for which both were booked) and got involved in another stamping incident with Martin Skrtel.
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The media outcry over the issue was probably a major factor in the decision of the F.A. to ban him, with Sky Sports in particular calling the incidents “Costa’s crimes”, a term Jose Mourinho took angry exception to. Yet after Sunday’s incident, the press have tried to highlight Gerrard’s supposed remorse as a reason not to castigate him, while Skrtel’s stamp has quietly gone unmentioned by the press.
The F.A. have actually charged him for the incident, so we wait in anticipation to see how many matches he would be forced to miss! Anything less than the 3-match ban Costa received will mean that the F.A. have ultimately shot themselves in the foot, and the campaign against Chelsea will be brought out again to the public.