Wayne Rooney will find his temperament under even greater scrutiny in England’s opening World Cup fixture on Saturday. It emerged last night that the match officials have taken a crash course in English swearwords as part of a crackdown on abusive language. Rooney has already been warned about his temperament by Fabio Capello, the England manager, and by Jeff Selogilwe, the South African referee who booked him and accused him of using foul and abusive language during the final warm-up match, against Platinum Stars on Monday. Now the temperamental striker will be alarmed to learn that Carlos Eugênio Simon, who will referee England’s first group C match against the United States in Rustenburg, and his assistants have been given a list of 20 English profanities to clamp down on. Simon’s appointment as a World Cup referee has already attracted controversy after his suspension from Brazilian football last year amid accusations of incompetence. Roberto Braatz, one of Simon’s two assistant referees in South Africa, said: “We can’t do this in 11 different languages, but at least we have to know the swearwords in English.” Altemir Hausmann, the other assistant referee, said: “We have to learn what kind of words the players say. All players swear and we know we will hear a few ‘son of a . . .’ ” Rooney’s conduct has been under scrutiny in the past two warm-up matches — a tangle with Marcus Tanaka, the Japan defender, went unpunished in the match in Graz on May 30 before he was booked for dissent on Monday — but Emile Heskey, his likely strike partner on Saturday, jumped to his defence yesterday.
Hilarious. Never really understood why people don't like Rooney more. He's a little pit bull. I love it.
