Dita's Slot Meter wrote:
Agree entirely.....The red card was the action of a ref who had completely lost control of the match and was simply trying to rein it back before it went completely haywire.
If referee's actually had the balls to clamp down on play-acting, then much of what happened in the second half would not have happened.....Both sides set out to get players dismissed or suspended for the return leg and it led to much of the bitterness that tainted the game.....The players seemed to spend most of the game accusing each other of cheating!!
I think too many people are making the decision out to be far too clear-cut. At match speed, my instinctive reaction (and I said it to my mate straight away) was 'red card', immediately followed by 'but it shouldn't have been, it was one of those silly 50/50's where one player swings at it, whilst the other tries to nick it, yet the one nicking it always seems to get the card'. After the minute or so it took for the card to come out, I was still in disbelief, but after re-watching it at match speed, I felt the ref's decision was completely justified when viewed at that speed. The way it looked, it looked like there was no clear winner, with one player trying to play the ball, the other going studs up over it.
After watching a few replays, more doubt begins to kick in and I'm still half stuck on the fence over it, but I don't think the ref made the decision because he was losing control, I felt the decision was brave and instinctive, something rarely seen in big games, where refs are encouraged to not spoil the game. The game would always be impossible to control, the shameless encouragement of spoiling tactics from both sides would always deny fairness and control, but I don't think many refs could have handled that game better. If anything, he should have sent Mourinho well away, and probably could have sent Adebayor off for a raised hand to the face, which is auto-red these days.
