The script leaked again.

Rodri, the high-tensile steel cables holding Manchester City’s billion-dollar bridge together, finally snapped. He didn’t just lose his cool; he went after the one thing the Premier League protects more than its broadcast rights: the illusion of the objective referee. Now, the FA is coming for him. The charge is "misconduct," which is corporate-speak for "you said the quiet part out loud and it’s bad for the brand."

The rant was classic post-match adrenaline, but it carried a weirdly clinical edge. Rodri didn’t just call the ref a name. He demanded neutrality. "The referee must be neutral," he told the cameras, his face a mask of sweating, expensive frustration. It’s a hilarious request when you think about it. It’s like asking a Twitter algorithm to be unbiased or expecting a smart thermostat not to sell your data to an insurance conglomerate.

We’ve spent the last five years turning football into a data-driven simulation. We have Hawk-Eye. We have semi-automated offside tech that draws lines thinner than a venture capitalist’s soul. We have VAR rooms in Stockley Park that look like NASA mission control if NASA was staffed by guys who still struggle with PDF attachments. We’ve done everything possible to remove the human element, yet we’re shocked when the humans left in the middle of the pitch act like, well, humans.

Rodri is the ultimate Pep Guardiola product. He is a player built on logic, positioning, and the cold calculation of the "tactical foul." He views the pitch as a series of geometric problems to be solved. When the referee introduces a variable that doesn’t fit the equation—a missed handball, a soft yellow, a moment of plain old incompetence—it creates a system error. Rodri didn’t just see a bad call; he saw a bug in the code.

But the FA doesn't care about system errors. They care about the product. The Premier League is a $6 billion-a-year content farm. Its primary export isn't sport; it's drama regulated by a very specific set of PR rules. Rule one: The Ref is Always Right, even when he’s staring at a 4K monitor and still missing the obvious. By questioning that "neutrality," Rodri isn't just being a sore loser. He’s attacking the infrastructure.

The friction here is expensive. A misconduct charge usually carries a fine that wouldn't cover the oil change on Rodri’s car, but the threat of a multi-match ban is where the real cost sits. For City, a few games without their pivot is the difference between a title and a graceful slide into second place. It’s a high price for a few seconds of honesty. The league wants players to be avatars—perfectly tuned, emotionally stunted, and perpetually grateful to be part of the show.

We’re told that technology was supposed to fix this. VAR was sold to us as the end of the "bar room debate." No more arguing. Just the facts, ma’am. Instead, it’s only shifted the goalposts. We don’t argue about whether a player was offside anymore; we argue about whether the guy drawing the line with a digital cursor had a steady hand or a hidden agenda. We’ve automated the process but kept the paranoia.

Rodri’s mistake was thinking that "neutrality" is something that can be enforced from the outside. It isn't. In a league where every foul is replayed thirty times in slow motion from twelve different angles, neutrality is a fantasy. Every angle tells a different lie. The referee isn't a neutral observer; he’s a frantic guy trying to navigate a blizzard of data points while 60,000 people call him a thief.

The FA will likely throw the book at him to make a point. They’ll talk about "integrity" and "respect for the officials." They’ll pretend that the system is working exactly as intended. They’ll ignore the fact that the more we try to digitize the game, the more the remaining human flaws stand out like a dead pixel on a flagship smartphone.

Rodri will pay the fine. He’ll probably issue a canned apology written by a social media manager who hasn’t watched a full ninety minutes since 2019. The machine will keep turning. We’ll go back to pretending that if we just add one more camera, or one more sensor in the ball, we’ll finally reach that promised land of objective truth.

But you have to wonder if the "neutrality" Rodri is looking for even exists in a game this loud and this rich. Or maybe he’s just realized what the rest of us have known for years: the house always wins, and the house really hates it when you point out the dealers are human.

If the referee actually managed to be perfectly neutral, would we even want to watch?