Wayne Rooney Escapes Ban: FIFA Is Losing Respect Due to Its Ridiculous Rules

There have been a number of controversies in world football this year. 

Everyone would expect the governing body of the game to be at the forefront of the efforts to address those controversies. However, the governing body, FIFA, seems to be the problem rather than the solution.

There have been and will always be acts that would bring disrepute to the game. FIFA needs to punish the perpetrators to show that it is doing all it can to stop such acts.

The recent act of Wayne Rooney blatantly elbowing James McCarthy was another one of those. Referee Mark Clattenberg, who just had a peripheral view of the incident, awarded a free kick.

Most people who saw it on TV saw it as an immediate sending off. Even Roberto Martinez said after the match that it was a definite red card.

In the past two months, players like Luis Suarez, Cristian Chivu and Gennaro Gattuso have also been punished after the game for violent incidents on the field. 

However, Rooney walks scot-free. Why? Because FIFA has a nonsensical rule that no action could be taken after the match for an action for which the referee has taken action on the field.

Just in January, a bit too much was made of Ryan Babel's re-tweet of a picture of Howard Webb in a Manchester United jersey. He was ultimately invited for a hearing from the FA for his mistake and paid a fine of 10,000 pounds.

I would be the first one to be in favor of that punishment, as what Babel did was wrong. But with no action taken on the Rooney incident, it is a very dangerous precedent that FIFA is inadvertently setting.

The punishment for violently hitting an opposition player is less than that of re-tweeting a picture after a disappointing loss.

This is not the first time Rooney has shoved an elbow in the face of an opposition player. He did the same against Abdoulaye Faye in 2008, where again he was not punished. Such inaction on the part of the administrators would just encourage him to repeat such acts in the future.

This was not the only piece of controversy where FIFA has been found wanting.

FIFA has been very reluctant to accept goal-line technology. The need for the technology was made very apparent on the grandest stage of all, the FIFA World Cup, where an English goal was denied even though it had clearly landed inside the goal line. 

However, instead of taking corrective steps, FIFA stubbornly still did not accept technology and opted to have a couple of officials more just to check the goal line—a ridiculous move.

Now, football is too strong a sport to be destroyed by incompetent administrators, but if FIFA does not improve its ways, it certainly would lead to disillusionment among a lot of fans and would also give encouragement to players and managers who think they can get away with murder.