The more stuff you pack into a system, the more interesting the fringe cases become. Soccer is a simple game, but when you add video replay, it gets messy pretty fast. Rules that looked fairly cut-and-dry before they were scrutinised with microscopic accuracy begin to look unfit for purpose. Games are delayed, fans and pundits get confused ... wait, that last part was always true. Feel free to strike it from the record, if you like.
This soccer player was just sent off twice in the same game
VAR has been a mess, but it has brought us some miracles.
If you are a fan of pure chaos, however — and I suspect everyone is, deep down, especially when you don’t have any rooting interest in a game — VAR does offer some upside. For instance, the following sequence would have been impossible before the introduction of replay:
I have to imagine this is the very first instance of a soccer player being sent off twice in the same match. To recap: in a Spanish second-division game between Fuenlabrada and Girona, Fuenlabrada midfielder Cristóbal Márquez was sent off for a flying kick on Girona’s Álex Granell.
You can tell why the referee dismissed Cristóbal — from where he’s standing, and in real time, the challenge looks brutal. But VAR checked it out and determined that while it looked ugly, there wasn’t enough contact to warrant a red card, so Cristóbal was retrieved from the Fuenlabrada changing room and booked instead. Reprieved, he was immediately provoked into a tête-a-tête with Granell, which earned both players a yellow card. But since he’d just had his red downgraded to a yellow, that booking was Cristóbal’s second, and he was sent off again.
I’m not sure what the record for time between red cards is, or if this really ought to count as two, but getting dismissed twice in four minutes is an incredible feat.
Thank you, VAR. This makes it all worth it. For a certain definition of ‘worth it,’ anyway.
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