I'm curious what the general feel of the red card would be if we substituted Chad Marshall out for his teammate Ozzie Alonso here on this play. Referees tend to look at it from a facts perspective. Fans, journalists, coaches, and opponents seem to be looking at this like it is a situation where the goodwill of Marshall overrides the actual action.
In the end, PRO is probably going to use the same argument they used against the Tomas Martinez red: it looks bad in the still, but the contact was glancing or the force wasn't as bad as it looked.
The insane thing about these red card reversals is that baked into PRO's contract (and the player's union contract too!) is that there would be a PRO rep on that panel. I mean, the referees literally went on strike to get this set up. And now, what, three seasons later?, PRO is obviously closer to the league owners than to the referees. There is no hope for the refs on this unless they ditch PRO. The argument before was that PRO brought to the table an international flair and an independence that US Soccer couldn't have. But the losers in this are the referees, obviously. When this happened to Unkle in Orlando, I think refs noticed, but it was explained as such a unique incident that it was just the cost of doing business. But now to Toledo and Gantar, a US and a Canadian, this hits at the heart of what PRO was meant to guard against. This current system just isn't sustainable unless the referees ditch PRO, or unless PRO ditches their current approach.
I get the argument this didn’t “look” like a red card in live time. I think in this instance looking at just the still image makes it looks much worse. It was a glancing contact. BUT, that’s why we have VAR! Was this a clear and obvious error at the World Cup? Absolutely not. Serie A? Probably not (I say hesitantly). Red card is defensible here though! And it’s expected outcome in the classroom environment. Completely baffling decision to reverse it.
There were a couple of interesting non-calls in the DC/NYC match last night, with no (obvious) VAR overrules... Gantar was the VAR, and I have to wonder if he was second-guessing himself about sending one or two of them down after this latest red card rescinding.
I wouldn't be surprised at all if that was in the back of his mind. I have to think it's pretty hard to just do your job if you have some panel on the ready to toss you under the bus at the slightest hint of pressure from teams and/or fans.