WC 1990: Rijkaard vs Voller

[Excape Goat]

I am not taling about the actual splitting by Rijkaard after the red cards were given. I want to know whether the two red cards were too harsh. Both Rijkaard and Voller have no contact prior to the red cards. They just yelled at each other.

N9xzNjQ984I

[prymetyme]

Certainly was a bit harsh. You are correct, there was no foul play by either previous to the incident. Rudi Voller had tucked his legs in and wasn't doing anything malicious. Rijkaard over reacted. The referee did as well. He was going with a extreme no tolerance policy. Things would have just escalated from there, this is Germany vs. Holland. But it was a bad call none the less. But it's alright, everything worked out in the end. :D

[MassachusettsRef]

Um, to fully grasp what happened in this infamous situation, you need to incident that happened about 1 minute previous, as well. Plus, this tape is too far zoomed in to assess exactly what was going on.

In a vacuum, is what we can see on the video worthy of two red cards? No. But given what had happened right before and right after, I don't think many can argue that neither one of them deserved to be on the field any longer at that point.

It also should be remembered that, though it was only 17 years ago, this was a somewhat different time in refereeing, really. Despite what the Laws said, it wasn't so much "you do X, you're sent off" than it was "ok, we've had enough of you, it's time to go." A lot of red cards were due to a culmination of events because referees would give second, third and fourth chances (really, though "PI" was always on the books, I don't think I ever saw it enforced until the late 90s) and, in this case, clearly the referee had had enough of these two.

Interesting side note here, since this is one of the most memorable World Cup refereeing decisions (probably 3rd ever after the final that year and the final this past year): one of our own, Vinnie Mauro, was an AR on the game; I've never asked him about it but I'm sure he's told the story of the match before, so maybe someone here has heard him speak on it.

EDIT: for those that don't know, this happened very early in the match, at the 22nd minute and the two players had both been cautioned in the 21st minute (though Rijkaard should have been sent off then); also, it should be noted that this was before the universal mandate that referees had to show second cautions, so it's a bit unclear as to whether the referee sent them off with straight reds or not (though the official report says they were straight reds); finally, there's a lot of history and story to the aftermath of this so it's worth looking up for those that don't know anything about it.

[NHRef]

also, we don't know what they were saying, possible the language alone could have been enough.

Also looked like a "dive" in there, the guy in white seemed to fall down as if shot at one point.

[Kebbie Gazauzkas]

I don't think that Voller deserved a caution, he didn't try to hit or intimidate the Netherlands player, Riijcard was the instigator and his behaviour in the aftermath was more disgraceful..

[BigGuy]

I am not taling about the actual splitting by Rijkaard after the red cards were given. I want to know whether the two red cards were too harsh. Both Rijkaard and Voller have no contact prior to the red cards. They just yelled at each other.

N9xzNjQ984I

I saw that game Rijkaard was then spitter Voller did not even know he was spat up on to after Rijkaard spit on him numerous time because he got him on the back of the head.

Do you think he coaches his barcelona players to put flem on their opponents?

[Excape Goat]

After some discussions here, I now recaleld the pair had some incidents prior to the red cards. They were at each other only a few minutes before the incident.