Hostile end to phoney war

Soccer: Give peace a chance, Sven and Nancy have been pleading, as he attempts to steer England towards Euro 2004, setting themselves up as the John and Yoko of our time.

Unfortunately, they chose to leave Old Trafford 15 minutes before the end of yesterday's match. And a couple of minutes after they left, war broke out.

It had been a poor enough game, but then the referee came along to ruin it. Steve Bennett, who received poor notices for missing a couple of bad fouls in the Community Shield, showed yesterday what can happen when referees feel the need to show that they have seen everything.

Roy Keane, the only man to be booked in the first half, ended up as Sven's emissary on the field, attempting to calm Patrick Vieira as the Arsenal captain's eighth dismissal took him to the top of the Premiership chart.

In between times, Bennett had showed questionable judgment when administering cautions to Kolo Toure, for a foul on Ruud van Nistelrooy, and Martin Keown, for felling Quinton Fortune. Van Nistelrooy went down as if hit by a bullet and lay perfectly still, which is one way of convincing a referee of serious injury. Fortune rolled over and over, which is the other way. Both managed to get up and returned to action, apparently unaffected, as soon as the referee had put his yellow card away.

Much worse was to occur between the 77th and 80th minutes. First Vieira was booked for a foul on Fortune in which he seemed to take the ball cleanly. Three minutes later he and van Nistelrooy went into a challenge which turned so nasty that when Vieira landed on the ground he flicked a retaliatory boot at the Dutchman. The fact there was a yard of space between the boot and van Nistelrooy did not prevent the Manchester United man from producing the sort of ham reaction last seen when Sofia Coppola, as Michael Corleone's daughter, stopped a bullet on the opera house steps in the final scene of Godfather III.

Bennett promptly reached for a second yellow card, thus turning a meaningless spat into an international incident.

Van Nistelrooy, too, was cautioned, while spats were going on behind the official's back: Gary Neville versus Freddie Ljungberg and his brother Philip versus Lauren.

"He made more of the challenge than he should have, and I think he cheated," Vieira said later. "He tried to stamp on me."

For once, Arsene Wenger saw the whole thing - thanks, he said, to the elevated position from which managers watch the game at Old Trafford. "I think van Nistelrooy didn't help, frankly," he said. "He's a great player, but his attitude is always looking for provocation and diving. He looks like a nice boy, but on the pitch he doesn't always show fair behaviour. If Patrick had to go, I think van Nistelrooy should have gone as well."

Twelve very heated minutes later, during which Bennett booked Cristiano Ronaldo and Fortune, the referee gave the home side a penalty for Keown's challenge on Diego Forlan. The beneficiaries of Robert Pires's dive a week earlier, Arsenal must have feared a sort of karmic retribution. But van Nistelrooy thumped his spot-kick against the bar, the full-time whistle went, and the war erupted.

Keown's leap of joy ended on van Nistelrooy's shoulders. Now there was more mayhem, with Ashley Colegoing in search of Ronaldo and finding himself fortunate to have a punch blocked by a team-mate.

Ferguson was not slow to respond to Wenger's remarks. "I'm very disappointed in Arsene's comments," he said. "That was terrible behaviour at the end. Beyond the pale, to be honest with you."

Disappointed, perhaps, but hardly surprised. Matches between these clubs are high-octane affairs that tend to produce flashpoints, and the two managers do little to lower the temperature.

Yet had Bennett been allowed to demonstrate a sympathetic understanding of the pressures of such a game, then the scraps that disfigured the final few minutes might never have happened.

A referee can hardly be blamed for failing to act on something he has not seen, but if an ability to judge the mood of a game cannot remain the principal criterion of his performance, then there is something badly wrong. And Acorns for Peace probably won't help, either.