An old friend’s calling card

As I sat on my sofa on Tuesday evening for the much hyped and eagerly anticipated second leg between Manchester United and Real Madrid, I spotted a very familiar face as Nemanja Vidic and Sergio Ramos met in the centre circle for the traditional coin toss — it was none other than my good friend, Cuneyt Cakir, the referee who sent me off in the final few minutes of our match against Italy in Poznan at Euro 2012.

Needless to say, myself and Mr Cakir haven’t stayed in touch since the summer but I have to admit I was intrigued to see how he would deal with such a huge encounter between two of the biggest clubs on the planet.

The shock news before kick off was that Wayne Rooney had been left out of United’s starting line-up, a decision which really took me by surprise as I’m a big fan of his. I felt a lot of sympathy for him the other night because sometimes I think his unselfishness and team-player ethos actually works against him. Last season he was Manchester United’s talisman and led the line to great effect, contributing a serious amount of goals. This season, with the arrival of Robin van Persie, he has had to play a number of different roles and, if he doesn’t affect the game in the way he is capable of — like when he played right wing at the Bernabeu in the first leg — then, much to my bemusement, fans and pundits seem very quick to criticise him.