First of all, he's not throwing his body around or making a tackle. He's kicking the ball. Successfully at that. I'm making that argument that soccer is a contact sport, and occasionally two people come together in a painful manner, with neither guilty of serious foul play. The Venezuelan is the one that went in late on the challenge. Why should he benefit from that? A better analogy would be if you were firing the gun at a target and someone jumped in front of you. Yes, you'd probably be in some trouble, but you wouldn't go to jail for murder.
From your points here, you apparently will never understand what I, and others, are saying. For some reason, I'll try again. You try to absolve this by saying soccer is a contact sport. Soccer is also a skillful finesse sport; one where you can't pretend that other players aren't around when you go diving into challenges. The Jamaican decided that he was going to go in extremely hard, and go in low so he would reach the ball first. You're saying that since he got the ball first, his follow-through motions can do whatever they do, free of persecution. I'm saying that his follow-through is part of the tackle and is therefore part of his foul. A foul that I, and many others, believe involved Excessive Force. Answer this - If the Venezuelan had toe poked the ball away first by a fraction of a second instead of the other way around, what would your decision be? Would it be a RC? You say the Venezuelan went in late on the challenge, and I think this may be a huge disagreement. I'd argue he never went in on the challenge. He tried to run through the ball...like he should have with space in front of him. Watch him, as I previously asked. He's expecting body-to-body contact until the Jamaican goes low. Quit blaming the victim. Quit pretending that he jumped in front of the Jamaican. This isn't an easy call, by any means, but quit making it tougher than what it is.
I'd say that is patently untrue. Both players reached for the ball. If you look at the frozen Fox Sports twitter clip in post #11, you can see both players are stretching for the ball. In the freeze frame they are almost mirroring each other. The bad thing is that the Venezuelan's foot reached the spot on the field first. The Jamaican then planted his cleats in roughly the same spot. Live action I think it looked like an easy red. As with lots of plays, if you slow it down the call becomes more complicated.
He kind of is throwing his body. Yes his back foot stays on the ground but he has almost no weight on it, he is so extended with the front leg there is no way to stop his forward momentum and he should easily be able to see the other player coming in. I think both players entered this challenge recklessly. I do think red is a bit harsh, yellow would be more appropriate, but it's enough of a grey area that the red is not way out of line, IMHO.
Wils, I think my difficulty understanding what you are saying may be that I'm not hip to going in high...
I'm genuinely amazed that there are people on this board who can be somewhat considered knowledgeable about refereeing and have a grasp of refereeing to an extent that genuinely believe that tackle was not a bad tackle or not red or even yellow card worthy. Are we watching the same play? The Venezuelan's players leg bends for a split second in a direction it shouldn't. This is a text book red card for me. I know the bar for a red card for SFP at the international has genuinely gotten higher the last couple of years. You are seeing more and more bad tackles that used to be punished with a red card not anymore. At least that is my observation from watching various Champions League, World Cup and European Championship matches. Any more force on that tackle and bone is showing. I'm just amazed that in this day and age there are people think this is okay. It's a studs up tackle with the cleats exposed above the ankle. I know the two tackles aren't the same, but I think everyone on here and most of the soccer world was in conclusion that this play should have been a red card and was missed by the referee crew. This was a play, that I feel, was genuinely unlucky. He breaks his leg more with the trailing leg than the actual lead leg. There was nothing missed time or "unlucky" by the Jamaican player in the clip above. Also, I thought I recognized that Jamaican player from before. He was the one that committed this tackle while sitting on a caution at last year's Gold Cup Final. It's around the 39th minute mark in the match and 49:30 in the YouTube video. No surprise that he was shocked at getting sent off in the match against Venezuela. He thought it was okay to make tackles like that at the international level without repercussion.
You seem to go from this to: But we have to look at the action, not the result -- unfortunate bad injuries happen that do not warrant discipline. Resulting injury can never make something a text book red. And this is where I think opinions diverge. You say it was a studs up tackle because at the end that's where foot ended up. But he didn' go in with studs (which is what I think of us "studs up"); he went in with the top of the foot and successfully played the ball that way, and ended up with his studs up in a way that came down hard on an opponent. I think this is far from a textbook red, but is a great study case. Unlike the classic SFP studs up tackle, here he (1) gets to the ball first, (2) plays the ball with the part of the foot we would expect, and (3) he's not trying to disposssess an opponent, but to challenge for a loose ball with an opponent who comes in a split second later. To me, this is a case study in how much any of those factors matter. I suspect that everyone on here would agree that if one of those three factors were missing, this would be a classic red. Mind you, I'm not arguing against he red. But I think it is misguided to say it is a "text book example" -- I think it is one that forces us to really think about it and go back to what red means: did he go into the challenge with excessive force or in a way tht endgangered the safety of an opponent. He was lunging from farther away in a way that he created a high likelihood, even if he got there first, of landing with studs on an opponent. That is enough, for me, to get to red notwithstanding the three elements that make it, in my mind, different from the classic studs up challenge. (I thought Mass Refs post at 18 was an excellent explanation.) (I don't think there is much similar in these two plays. Among other things, in this clip the victim is in possession of the ball in a known path and the lunging challenge has absolutely no chance whatsoever of getting the ball without brutall contact in plowing through the victim.)
Thanks SoCal and Mass Ref for addressing the nuances of this play and not bending your interpretation of the event to fit a line of argument (although I seldom refer to the the completion of an instep kick while my plant foot is still on the ground as lunging). I'm not going to continue further since I am fine with guidance given, but I still have the feeling that despite socal's post we are still too much in the result than the action. If Austin kicked the Venezuelan on the upswing of his follow through, would that have been a foul? Is Austen's ending foot position, unfortunately squarely on the Venezuelan's ankle, any less inevitable? Thx everyone for the discourse and GO USA!!!!
A couple of points: the ball lands almost equally distant from both Austin and Rincón. Both take one step towards the ball and reach with the other leg towards the ball. Austin is able to kick it, Rincón cannot, but plants his foot first in the very spot Austin is coming down on. Austin rakes Rincón's calf and rolls his ankle as he comes down on it. Rincón falls hard. Austin is not coming in with much momentum as he took only one step and is fully extended and squatting to reach the ball. Rincón gets up and plays the full 90. Carrillo is close and directly opposite Rincón. He sees Austin flash across, rake, and pin Rincón. He does not see that Rincón is late to the ball. Had he been in line with Austin or between the two, I think he would have made a very different decision.