Barcelona midfielder Andres Iniesta is to appeal a one-match suspension handed down by UEFA after European football's governing body decided that the World Cup winner had deliberately provoked a yellow card in the first leg of the team's 6-1 aggregate win over Shakhtar Donetsk in the Champions League quarter-finals. The card resulted in Iniesta being suspended for the meaningless second leg in the Ukraine rather than risking a ban in a more important match, and UEFA have decided that he deliberately earned a yellow card by refusing to retreat the proper distance from a free kick with the score 3-0 so as to have the slate clean for the semi-finals.
Andres Iniesta To Appeal UEFA Champions League Suspension
Semi-final opposition Real Madrid have also run afoul of this rule in the current campaign, with Sergio Ramos and Cristiano Ronaldo picking up suspensions after deliberately allowing themselves to be booked in the Castillians' penultimate group stage game so as to be guaranteed fit for the first round of knockout matches. UEFA took a dim view of this strategy, banning each player for a further match, and Jose Mourinho for two (later reduced on appeal).The Portuguese manager spoke out against Barcelona and Iniesta trying the same trick.
Maybe you have to find a reason why Mourinho cannot clean yellow cards and other coaches can. To be honest, as I always am, when we scored the fourth goal against Tottenham at the Bernabeu, my assistant told me, ‘Yellow card to Cristiano Ronaldo and to Ricardo Carvalho’.
And I told him, ‘No way, because, if we do it, I am suspended for the semi-finals and my players are suspended for the semi-finals’. “The next day, we are at home. Another coach did it, another player did it.
Barcelona, for their part, are appealing the ban, and have issued a statement defending Iniesta’s actions:
The good faith of the player and the disproportionate nature of the proposed sanction will be sufficient to rebut the allegations.
It’s very difficult to prove intent, of course, so it’ll be interesting to see how UEFA handle this. But it’s also very easy to get a yellow card for being persistently annoying with the game already won, and that’s more or less what Iniesta decided to do.
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