Di Canio hasn’t had the felicitous of relationships with the authorities, he has been fined for two instances of a fascist salute in Italy, but that night at Goodison Park lingers in the memory as exposing a more sentimental side to an enigmatic, rebellious character and with him always facing the next accusation of the moral breach, he is currently the subject of investigation for the racial abuse of an loan midfielder Jonathon Tehoue, his Fair Play Award looks like a strange anomaly amongst a string of offences.

But such misdemeanours and misinformed politics are often ignored when it comes to footballing pragmatism or the self-interest of a football fan. Take GMB’s donation of £4,000 a year to Swindon Town terminated by the trade union upon learning that Di Canio and his right-wing tendencies would be appointed at the County Ground, it is now irrelevant after the Italian led the club to the League Two championship in his inaugural year. Or even the investigation into an alleged racial abusing of midfielder Jonathon Tehoue whilst he was on loan at Di Canio’s side. The Swindon Town board have come out in public to announce full support of their manager’s innocence and even questioned Tehoue’s account before it had been investigated by the authorities. Having won promotion, the league title and led the club to Wembley in his first season, Di Canio’s position at Swindon is water-tight, so much that you can be an open fascist at a club with a “zero tolerance on racism” policy.

It is a whole new type of moral debate that has been attracted to the club this week however, as goalkeeper Luke McCormick was invited for a trial. Not the most stellar name, but you may remember him. A former Plymouth Argyle goalkeeper, McCormick has just served a prison sentence for the manslaughter of two young boys, Aaron and Ben Peak, and the serious injury of their dad Phillip, whilst driving under the influence of alcohol whilst holding no insurance back in the summer of 2008. He was sentenced to seven years and four months in prison but due to the crazy leniency of the British judiciary system, he has only served four years before his scheduled release of June 2012. That is an argument for another day however, but the fact remains that there is nothing preventing the re-registration of McCormick and that is set to follow Lee Hughes and Marlon King back into their highly-paid profession via a stint in jail.

There is a gaping chasm between the idiocies of aiming a right wing salute to a bunch of fans to causing the horrific death of two young children however, but with football, there seems to be no line drawn when it comes to acceptance in the sport. With Lee Hughes, there has been plenty of clamour to subject the striker to a barrage of abuse as he visits grounds up and down the country, but Oldham fans weren’t the slightest bit bothered about his past, involving the death by dangerous driving of a man back in 2004, when he was hitting 18 goals to bring them within two places of a play-off spot in 2008, nor were Notts County fans when he fired them to promotion from League Two in 2010 with 33 goals. “Hughes has served his sentence” they said, “he has the right to ply his trade and his trade is football” read the summary of the argument and it is a perfectly legitimate one, Hughes scored goals before his crime and should withhold the right to score goals once he has served his punishment, but he did his rounds, the goals flowed, people saw he wasn’t bothered by the abuse and the novelty of having a criminal to sling vitriol at from the terraces as worn off. Even a sexual assault charge in December, County stood by the striker, clubs do when you score goals you see; Hughes finished this season with eleven.

Hughes won’t be the first professional footballer to have a conviction swept under the carpet in the name of pragmatism, Marlon King of Birmingham City has 14 convictions against his name, ranging from speeding to the sexual assault and battery of a 20 year old female in December of 2008. Eighteen months in prison were served and he was Coventry’s top scorer and player of the year a season barely eight months of his release. King showed his loyalty to the faith installed by the Sky Blues by reneging on a verbal agreement of a new deal to sign for Birmingham, where he has finished a fruitful campaign with 18 goals and which saw his new club narrowly miss out on promotion to the Premier League.

Here is the deal, if you are good at kicking a ball into the back of the net then you can do whatever you want (as long as it’s not the most drastic of homicides) and be welcomed back into the sport with a big pay-packet and a three year deal. You would have to harbour the most ignorant of naivety to think that Ched Evans, scorer of 35 goals this season for Sheffield United and now a few weeks into a proposed five year sentence for the rape of a 19 year old girl, would be ignored by all of the 92 league clubs when the gate to the free world re-opens to him a few years down the line. Contrast that with the case of Mark Marshall then, banned from the game for 2 years following the discovery that he had been taking performance-enhancing drugs whilst playing for Barnet, he has had an uninspiring career which has seen him take in seven clubs by the age of 25. The smart money is on Marshall’s disappearance into the non-leagues as nobody remembers 0 goals in 19 in two years at Swindon Town, they do remember 35 in 42 and forgetting the severity of the crime, the exploitation of a vulnerable drunk young girl is tenfold worse than the misguided use of a dietary supplement, if a club was to pick, it would be Evans all the way.

In a quest for the moral high ground, it hasn’t been the most productive of years for football; Liverpool and Kenny Dalglish somehow escaped censure for their continuous support of Luis Suarez throughout his case against accusations of racism, John Terry has seen his own fight against an accusation delayed since October to the point that it is now chip paper, Carlos Tevez was allowed to take half the season off on a golfing jolly before being crowned as a champion, Tony Pulis was allowed to use his elevated status as a football manager to escape punishment for speeding whilst this summer’s spotlight is about to fall on the Ukraine and Poland where right wing extremism and hooliganism are rife for the exchange of money between dignitaries. Darlington have been allowed to slip to within seconds of the extinction wall, Portsmouth have been ripped apart at the seams, as have Coventry and Blackburn as the FA’s “Fit and Proper Person Test” failed once more. Whilst there is not a lot wrong on the pitch, as shown by the most exciting season in years, there is quite a lot wrong off it.

Yet, the product still sells, fans wouldn’t pay £1,954 for a season ticket at Arsenal if it didn’t, but again, here is the self-interest fallacy.  Football is a dog eat dog business now, clubs look after themselves, fans support the club and whatever player it brings in regardless of his package, and as long as McCormick keeps a clean sheet away at Leyton Orient next season, they wouldn’t be too bothered about seeing a man who has the death of two innocent young children on his hands donning the jersey. A club is synonymous with its fans and as long as they are in place, a club can do anything (apart from change a strip colour from blue to red) and it will be supported.

Such is the volatile nature of the game however, where there is a constant demand for story to fill the void between what is now the smallest of match gaps, there is always a prominence for the game to rear its ugly head of hypocrisy and cold hearted pragmatism in the search of results that has never been more important. As long as you can get those results though, like Di Canio has proven he can, you have sporting licence to do just about anything and remain a hero.