Etiquette has its place but the general notion that fair play should prevail is unachievable when so much is at stake
Football still has a hankering for sportsmanship. There is distaste when someone wags an imaginary card, calling for a caution or worse. The Manchester City manager Roberto Mancini indulged in that piece of mime on Monday when unsuccessfully seeking the dismissal of Wigan's Maynor Figueroa for a handball offence near the halfway line that, in his view, prevented Sergio Agüero from going clear and possibly extending the lead to 2-0.
Mancini has done this before, even if he slyly suggested that he had been following the example of Wayne Rooney, whose request that Vincent Kompany be sent off in the FA Cup tie between the Manchester clubs was granted. The indignation about such conduct is, however, preposterous when football itself is awash with aggression if not violence. It is as if chivalry is to be preserved purely in little episodes of no great consequence.
We should still be glad for twitches of nobility, as when a player puts the ball out of play so an injured opponent can get treatment. Etiquette has value, but the general notion that fair play should prevail is unachievable when so much is at stake for clubs such as City who have put dizzying sums into the pursuit of honours. Mancini himself will feel the stress since only the Premier League title is likely to be deemed a satisfactory return by the owners this season.
The sport is always in two minds, tied to pragmatism but suffering from pangs of idealism. That image of Pelé and Bobby Moore embracing one another at the end of the 1970 World Cup game in Guadalajara is taken as the epitome of the dignity and humanity that football can nurture. Even so, it has to be recalled that little rested on that group match since both countries went on to the quarter-finals.
Pelé's gladness may also have had a connection to the realisation that he would not be exposed to the type of brutishness he had known at the 1966 tournament in England. So far as violence is concerned, the situation is improved in modern times by both the camera work that brings it to light and the willingness of the authorities to take retrospective action.
It is a long time since the feeling existed that the natural order of football demanded that brutality and artistry must both be present. If players are more solicitous to one another than was once the case, it may because they appreciate the damage that can be done when collisions occur between athletes whose physiques look as if they have been constructed in a laboratory.
We are left with a paradox. It is no longer assumed that the natural order of football requires that smart wingers be countered by ruffian full-backs. Instead the dreadful injuries are more likely to arise from the impact of highly engineered sportsmen who mean one another no particular harm. The players themselves understand that better than anyone.
Games tend to be trials of athleticism, with the footballers no longer so prone to the straightforward hacking of yesteryear. There may also be solidarity among professionals, who all appreciate the wealth that awaits in the top flight so long as they stay relatively unscathed.
It is unlikely that there is a statistical record of confrontation, but players do not appear to clash in quite the same manner that they once did. No contemporary image, for instance, has quite the same fascination as the photograph of Dave Mackay confronting Billy Bremner and grabbing his fellow Scot by the shirt front.
The game now has so incessant a tempo that footballers may struggle to spare enough breath to keep a feud going. Their managers, too, would be enraged by the lapses in concentration when bickering and petty conflict gets in the way of all the planning that had gone into the match.
In that regard, Mancini let himself become an interruption on Monday evening. There is never any benefit in potentially distracting your own players when they hold a slender lead. The City manager can surely find better means of strengthening the bonds with his men than making the referee a common enemy.