Читать книгу Unforgettable Soccer - Luciano Wernicke - Страница 38

Insults, blows, and spit are reactions as repulsive as they are “normal” after a red card. Nobody likes to leave the field before the match is done, and, with the heartbeats running up to a thousand beats per minute, violent behavior is today a common occurrence in all the world’s stadiums. However, there are players who have proven to be more original than others when it comes to expressing their anger, such as the Argentine striker Sergio Ibarra. On February 25, 2000, after referee Carlos Hernandez—overseeing the Pesquero de Huancayo-FC Melgar of Arequipa match of the Peruvian First Division—exhibited his red card to the local player Lino Morán. Ibarra approached the man in black and…put his hand on his butt! The freehand man—or “free-fingered man”—was also red-carded and received a six-month punishment from the Justice Committee of the Sports Association (CJAD). Melgar won by a score of 3-0 although the match ended hastily after that: due to their inferiority both on the scoreboard and on the field, three men of Pesquero (today called Deportivo Wanka) simulated injuries for the match to end right there, so the win did not result in catastrophe.

More “playful,” if the word fits, were the members of the amateur team Migliaro. In January of 2008, this squad of the Uruguayan department of Salto suffered five red cards to their rivals of the club Tío (meaning “Uncle,” yes, that’s their name!). As a repudiation of the red tide that had left them without the minimum regulatory amount of seven players to continue with the game, the players surrounded the referee Juan Carlos Silveira and, in a quick maneuver, took off his clothes. Stripped down to his underpants, the helpless referee was eventually rescued by the police.

Another one that did not have it easy was the referee Claudio Aranda in the second division match between Club de Deportes Antofagasta and Club de Deportes La Serena in April of 2003, by the second division. After the home team scored 2-1, La Serena’s players furiously protested an alleged offside. In the middle of the tumultuous chaos, Aranda expelled the Argentine midfielder Rodrigo Riep. While the visitors continued with their claim, Riep saw that the referee had dropped the other card, the yellow one. Blind with anger, the former CA River Plate player took the card and, as if he had scissor hands, ripped it into a thousand pieces. “I broke it because I was really furious, I didn’t even think about it, it was instinctual, I left it in pieces yes, and the card was made of plastic, but I was so mad and felt so wronged, that it felt like cardboard,” Riep said. The consequence of this action, though, was that the Disciplinary Court gave the midfielder four suspension matches: one for the foul that motivated his expulsion from the game and three for his unusual reaction. “When I spoke with my old man and told him everything, he told me ‘Kid, they sent you to jail there,’” he said with humor. His Italian colleague Fernando d’Ercoli had a similar, though slightly more “gourmet” attitude: after being thrown out in the ASD Pianta-ASD Ronta FC Arpax match, played in 1989 in a regional league, d’Ercoli snatched the red card from the ref…and ate it!

Meanwhile, Englishman Darren Painter’s red card protest in November 1999 was a bit more disgusting. Defender for Buckland Athletic FC of the Berkshire League, Painter approached the ref who had shown him the red card, took off his shorts, and urinated him! Of course, the foul reaction did not go unnoticed: Painter was thrown out of the league—and his own club—for life, and also from his own club.