That looks fair. De Jong is just using the raised leg technique to gain elevation on his leap. Purely incidental contact.
That just means Zlatan successfully disguised it to fool you and apparently many others. No doubt he's been perfecting that move for years.
That might well be true. I personally won't condemn unless I'm reasonably sure but you should know after all my years posting here, that if I was sure, nobody would be harder on him.
THE BATTLE OF LOS ANGELESIn this corner, weight as much as a lion with an ego larger than the moon and the skills to go along with it...ZLATAAAAAAAN.And in this corner, Carlos Vela. Who we love. And is having a better season.But who is not Zlatan. pic.twitter.com/ZqTILHLie8— StatsBomb (@StatsBomb) July 25, 2019 1153840555627073536 is not a valid tweet id Adding this as to you can see how we play with Zlatan
I'm not arguing for sanctioning him because he's on my team and I want him to play. But I do think it's probably a little tactical thing Zlatan does from time to time, like Ramos' arm-lock on Salah wasn't the first time we'd seen him do that move. It's just in these cases, there was a serious injury, but I think this kind of stuff happens quite often with hard men in soccer (though less with VAR nowadays). I don't think he's trying to injure anyone, but he's making sure that when he clatters his 8 foot frame into you going up for a 50/50 ball, you're going to come down dreading going up for the next one. I have been pretty critical of Zlatan, but I can't think of a player I'd want more for these LAFC matches.
That sounds about right. Zlatan is not necessarily trying to hurt anyone, but I'm convinced he's definitely trying to send a message. It's really not hard to know where your opponents face and your arms are when you jump up for a ball.
Even though everything has been decided in Ibra’s case I still think the issue is interesting. I came across a US Soccer document with fairly detailed (and I think fairly smart) guidelines to help referees adjudicate “above-the-shoulder contact”. I don’t know if MLS has similar guidelines but here they are: https://www.massref.net/ussfdirectives/Contact_Above_the_Shoulder.pdf According to this doc intent is not decisive for above shoulder contact. Good thing because intent often isn’t clear in these situations. In Ibra’s case it could be a mostly benign natural motion (as @barroldinho & others argue), it could be an attempt to establish physical dread in defenders (@MPNumber9), it could be retaliation for Saleh’s earlier studs-up foul (@73Bruin) or it could be something in between. Also note that due to defender vulnerability to face/head contact a high level of force is not required for a red. In these cases (contact actually occurs) the main factors are offender’s direction of motion (body and arm), area of contact and outcome. Anyway if so inclined read the doc & make your own decision on where Zlatans actions fit. I think Ibra checks most of the red card boxes but that’s “just my opinion, man.” Of course this is not an official MLS doc and you may take issue with its guidelines. I don’t know if MLS has its own guide for adjudicating arm to head situations. Probably not based on what I’ve seen. My guess is that every MLS ref has his/her internal set of rules; if so it’s going to continue to be a guessing game how they are going to rule. As it has been for years.
I think you make a solid argument, frankly. I think 50/50s are always tougher to judge than other types of challenges, although based on that guidance I think Zlatan's a little lucky to escape there.
By the document that Skydog posted, Zlatan should have received a red card at the time of the incident. On the other hand, Jair Marrufo was the ref and he has a history of not calling reds including one that should have been called on El-Munir earlier in the match. I looked at the referee thread to see their reaction. The immediate reaction from the moderator was that it was a yellow; 24 to 48 hours later (after everyone had a chance to decry the injury), it became a red foul. FWIW, I have only seen a few camera angles but it looked like El-Munir made no real attempt to play the ball either. Rather he jumped (late and not nearly as high as Zlatan) to block Zlatan's path to the ball with his arms out . This was totally ineffective against Zlatan's height and mass. Had he jumped against someone like Antuna, I wonder if he would have been called for the foul.
My belated retrospective... https://barroldinhosoccer.wordpress.com/2019/07/25/lag-vs-lafc-iii-goats-vs-predator/