These have been an interesting few days in Spanish football around the subject of how we treat our stars, what we expect them to accept, and whether we are properly protecting them. It’s a morality tale that includes Kylian Mbapp├й, Carlo Ancelotti, Gavi and that will extend to Vin├нcius J├║nior, and it emerged on Saturday when Spanish and European champions Real Madrid were surprisingly beaten 1-0 at relegation-threatened Espanyol.
Los Blancos have recently restored one of their most thrilling, most chilling skills: The ability to retrieve possession around their own penalty area and, via no more than three or four passes, be up at the other end of the pitch scoring a dazzling goal somewhere between 14-18 seconds later. It’s sporting lightning.
Against the blue-and-white club in Barcelona, Ancelotti’s team were unleashing one of these extraordinary counter-attacks, with Mbapp├й in full flight, when the guy who would become the infamous name of the evening lunged wildly at the Frenchman. His name is Carlos Romero and by the end of the match, he’d be enjoying the greatest moment of his short career by virtue of scoring the winner. But in the instant when he thought that Espanyol’s world was about to collapse, he attempted the ugliest of fouls to bring Mbapp├й down, at any cost, by diving, leg-extended, to rake his boot down the back of the forward’s calf.
Although the referee correctly let the move flow to see whether it ended in advantage or even a goal for Madrid, the absolute requirement was that, immediately after the play stopped, this should merit a red card. Neither the on-pitch referee, nor his companion in the VAR room, considered this a foul worthy of expulsion. It became one of the worst decisions in recent Spanish football.
While not sending Romero off was ludicrous, the fact that he was at the back post to volley home a wonderful right-wing cross, thus reducing Madrid to holding just a one-point lead over Atletico going into the derbi this weekend, made things much worse. (Stream LIVE: Real Madrid vs. Atletico Madrid, Saturday, 2:50 p.m. ET, ESPN+)
Worst of all was the refereeing team ignoring that Romero had risked, without any thought of the consequences, severe damage to an opponent — the kind of damage that the sport’s lawmakers, and FIFA as governing body, have sought to exterminate from our game so that players are adequately protected. It’s unimaginable how these officials decided that they had no duty of care to Mbapp├й: it flew in the face of everything that those who run football have been trying to preach for the past 30 or 40 years.
Fortunately, Madrid’s leading scorer is fine, but that’s not the point and that’s not what the laws say: you can be punished for recklessness and the potential for your actions to cause serious injury.
Not for the first time, I’m totally with Carlo Ancelotti when he spoke with dignity and well-contained fury after the match: “It was an ugly foul with a big risk of injury and it’s also VAR’s responsibility to look out for and protect players.” That was part one of the evidence that emerged as to how we think players can or should be treated or protected.
