Fornaroli is playing his fourth season in the A-League and some opposition fans have criticised the Uruguayan for going down too easily over the years.

El Tuna won a foul in their Round 1 Melbourne Derby win, which was originally given outside the box, before the VAR intervened and awarded a penalty. Florin Berenguer’s spot kick was saved by Lawrence Thomas, but Ritchie de Laet netted on the follow-up.

In the aftermath of the row about the VAR decision, FFA conceded there was not enough contact for a penalty – but clarified the system cannot overturn fouls.

In City’s 1-1 away draw to Central Coast Mariners, Kalifa Cisse brought Fornaroli to the ground in the box, but no penalty was awarded by the referee or VAR despite it appearing worse than the Derby foul.

Coach Warren Joyce defended Fornaroli after the game, pleading for officials to look at every incident and judge them on their own merits.

And Fornaroli was unrepentant when he spoke to FTBL.

“I don’t care what the people are talking about, I don’t care, trust me,” Fornaroli said. “I don’t listen.

"Too many people talk and haven’t touched a football in their life. They talk about football and they really don’t know.

“I can’t take one moment of my life or lose a second of my time to listen to these type of talks, so I don’t care what they say.”

Corey Brown and Raul Baena involved in the Bruno foul...

City meet Sydney FC tonight at AAMI Park and the 31-year-old is relishing playing his first home game this season.

The Prickly Pear is yet to score this season, but is happy with the way he and his team have performed so far.

He was out for the majority of last season with an ankle injury, making his return in February.

“In the first game, derbies are difficult to play nice football and you have to win,” he said. “I don’t care about the way, but you need the three points in those games.

"The team did a very good job, everyone was running, fighting and this was great to see when everyone involved in the game was pushing for the same thing.

“I feel a little bit of disappointment about the Mariners game because we couldn’t find a way to win and I think we could’ve got three points, so we lost two points there.

“I try to do my job and help my team. At the moment I’m not scoring, but I’m doing well for the team, so this is the most important thing and it’s important to win the league.

“Football is like this, if you don’t score for two goals and people might question ‘what’s happened?’ or ‘he’s not the same player’, but I don’t care about that.

“I try to do my job and in football everything can change in a second. I hope I can score against Sydney and people can say, ‘Oh yeah, he’s back’.

El Tuna is a cool customer...

“We can’t think too much about Sydney, we have to think about that for the first game at home and we need to create this idea that it’s difficult to play against Melbourne City this year away.

"We need to make playing at home special. I always love playing there, it’s my home and I always feel something special at AAMI Park, so I can’t wait to play.”

Fornaroli is entering his final season of his four year contract and he said he has matured in his time in Melbourne.

He captained City in the 2016/17 season and is the all-time leading goal scorer for the club.

“I always say I’m very happy here, but with football, you never know what’ll happen in the future,” El Tuna said.

“My family and I are grateful to the club to open the door to this country and help my family and myself every day.

“I can only say thank you to the club and all the people involved here. Maybe people only see the players and staff, but there are so many people that work for the club and help.”