Manchester City have officially fired Roberto Mancini as their manager, with a statement on the club's website citing a failure to "achieve any of its stated targets this year" as the reason behind his dismissal.
The writing was seemingly on the wall for Mancini, who saw the Citizens lose the Premier League title to Manchester United this season and were eliminated from the Champions League group stage without a single win as well.
When combined with their recent FA Cup defeat to Wigan Athletic, this seemingly left club officials with no choice but to part ways with the Italian manager.
The news quickly spread around the world, and invoked some great responses from celebrities, football pundits and viewers alike via Twitter.
Eurosport were first to confirm the sacking had taken place, which was quickly greeted with affirmative responses, such as that from Opta's Cristian Nyari:
One of the things that the sacking did show was the difference in class between the two Manchester clubs over the past few days. The Sun's Charlie Wyett points out just how differently City and United dealt with their current managers leaving the job, and how that reflects on the clubs:
Devin Pleuler at MLSSoccer.com and AP writer Rob Harris both pointed out that Mancini's firing highlighted some serious problems at the board level for City:
However, as The Guardian's Sid Lowe and others highlight, the timing on Mancini's firing is bizarre, given that there are only two games remaining this season:
Football writer Ives Galarcep also weighed in on that fact—suggesting that Malaga manager Manuel Pellegrini may well be the next in charge at the Etihad:
Yet as Sky Sports' Guillem Balague notes, perhaps the incident isn't that unusual after all, and that the decision to fire Mancini right now definitely has some merit to it:
And with a £28 million compensation package reportedly set to be provided for Mancini, the decision might not seem like such a bad idea after all:
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