World Cups produce non-playing “villains” as well as rogues of the on-field variety.
Frenchmen and Scots alike would happily throw Craig Joubert of South Africa in the stocks for his – how best to put this?– idiosyncratic refereeing in 2011 and 2015, while the Italians would leave a horse’s head in the bed of the fixture planner who cost them so dearly in 2003, if only they could find him. Yet some of the accused are less guilty than others. Take the case of Romeo Gontineac, who coached Romania at the global gathering in New Zealand a decade ago and waved a white handkerchief by asking te...