Italian Football Returns

[RustyRef]

Very lively return tonight. VAR handball penalty given, Ronaldo misses it, then straight from the rebound Ante Rebic is sent off for an absolute shocker of a challenge. All of this inside the first 20 minutes of the game.

 

[RefIADad]

Very lively return tonight. VAR handball penalty given, Ronaldo misses it, then straight from the rebound Ante Rebic is sent off for an absolute shocker of a challenge. All of this inside the first 20 minutes of the game.

I watched the replay of that game a couple of nights ago. I think Rebic's challenge might have been more dangerous than De Jong's challenge in the 2010 World Cup final. It sure looked like it was higher in the chest and closer to the neck/throat area.

 

[Rowanmano]

The shocking thing was that the referee originally gave a yellow card don’t know what he was looking at to only give a yellow

 

[RefIADad]

The shocking thing was that the referee originally gave a yellow card don’t know what he was looking at to only give a yellow

The one and only thing I can think of is because of the penalty kick and some of the scrambling around that, he was out of position to see just how bad the challenge was. So he knew it was pretty bad, but didn't give a red because he wasn't sure about yellow vs red. Not making excuses, just trying to get an idea about what could have been going through his mind.

This type of play is a data point strongly in favor of VAR. It's an obvious send off, and it didn't take long to upgrade the caution to a red card. These are the type of plays where VAR adds a lot of value.

 

[Big Cat]

Absence of RC explained by VAR to fall back on?

 

[GraemeS]

Absence of RC explained by VAR to fall back on?

If he didn't see a RC foul then he can't give a RC. I do agree that can sometimes be a valid question, but I agree with @Rowanmano in that in this case, I'm actually more surprised that he saw enough to give a yellow!

 

[RustyRef]

Could be any number of reasons, dodgy angle, blocked view, or even just human error. They key thing is they very quickly put it right, presumably AR or 4th official was in his ear straight away.

Fast breaks from penalties can be tricky for referees as they can have to run through an awful lot of players to get back into position, especially one like this where play switched to the other swde of the pitch to where we was stood for the penalty.

 

[Jorik0907]

He never gave the yellow, think he just had it out to diffuse. 4th very quickly and probably in no uncertain terms said it was red

 

[Grayson]

Teamwork