Another day, another ugly outburst on the football pitch. On Tuesday night it was the turn of Arsène Wenger, the increasingly frustrated Arsenal manager, who confronted referee Massimo Busacca following his team's disastrous 3-1 defeat by Barcelona. The tongue-lashing began on the pitch, and continued furiously into the tunnel. Yesterday Wenger was charged by Uefa with improper conduct for "inappropriate language".
It wasn't the first time Wenger has shown his anger so publicly. The man known by fans as "the professor" dashed a water bottle furiously to the ground last year, kicked another into the air the year before and was once fined £10,000 for his aggressive behaviour after pushing former West Ham boss Alan Pardew. All this from a man considered one of the more placid and intellectual in the game.
The truth is that spitting anger from football managers has become so common it often barely prompts a shrug from fans. Just days before the Wenger incident, highly stressed Celtic manager Neil Lennon squared up to Rangers assistant manager Ally McCoist at the end of their match, in a scene that was genuinely chilling. Some of the most successful football managers are famed, even celebrated, for their anger – the most prominent, of course, being Manchester United's Alex Ferguson who, while usually well-behaved during games, has always trailed rumours of terrifying behaviour in the dressing room, including one incident in which he allegedly kicked a boot into David Beckham's face.
On-pitch anger is bad enough when coming from players – young men idolised by boys and girls – but it is even more insidious and repulsive from managers, men at the very top of their profession, who are plainly, explicitly, authority figures. This kind of behaviour would be considered completely unacceptable in any other job, and yet in one of the most high-profile, prized and best-remunerated roles in British public life it has become every day. Each incident leaves another scar on the face of the beautiful game.
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