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Former Manchester United goalkeeper Anders Lindegaard took to Instagram & Twitter to respond to Wayne Rooney’s perceivably snide comments about him. Speaking to Sport Magazine earlier, Rooney had labelled Lindegaard ‘annoying’, a charge Lindegaard responded to with over the top humour, if a bit crude.
Rooney made the comments in response to a question that asked him who he wouldn’t like to be stuck in an elevator with. In fairness, Rooney had perhaps responded in jest, however the ‘annoying’ label looks to have rubbed Lindegaard the wrong way. Lindegaard took to Twitter & Instagram to respond, using a rather fortunately timed photograph to make his point. One wonders how long & hard Lindegaard needed to search for that particular image.
The tweet has created a bit of a storm in Lindegaard’s native land, with the Danish press not taking too kindly to Rooney’s comments.
Lindegaard escapes FA punishment
Despite the expletive & risque image used by Lindegaard, the FA have decided against punishing the second choice West Brom goalkeeper. It goes against the grain since the FA have been quite strict with enforcing their social media policies in recent times. The policies state that “Participants should be aware that any comments [made on social media] which are deemed improper, bring the game into disrepute, or are threatening, abusive, indecent or insulting may lead to disciplinary action.”
In a view to enforcing the above guidelines, Rio Ferdinand & Robert Huth were punished by the FA with bans for tweets that were deemed sexist & transphobic respectively.
There is a case to be made that Lindegaard ran afoul of the following FA guideline “Comments which are personal in nature or could be construed as offensive, use foul language or contain direct or indirect threats aimed at other participants are likely to be considered improper.” The FA have perhaps decided that Lindegaard was responding with just a bit of harmless ribbing.
