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Thursday, October 03, 2013

Lannoy discovers getting the yellow card out early has its risks

Stephane Lannoy is a seasoned ref. the Frenchman reffed at the Euros last year and in the last World Cup. He is high on the list when plum European assignments are handed out. Lannoy has also joined the trend now favoured by many referees of getting your yellow card out of your pocket early to indicate that it's only a yellow, not a red.

Lannoy's behaviour during Tuesday's Celtic vs Barcelona Champions League game showed that this technique is also fraught with risk.
Brazilian genius Neymar squeezed in front of Celtic captain Scott Brown as they chased the ball towards the Celtic goal. Neymar went down under the slightest of touches and was given a free kick. As Neymar fell, a frustrated Brown aimed a kick at the Barca player, who lived up to his reputation with an excellent impression of a pantomime cowboy being gunned down.
No-one's really arguing about the facts.
Lannoy was not far away and seemed to have a good view. He immediately reached into his rear left  pocket and pulled out his yellow card, holding it down by his side.
Players saw this and relaxed. They most probably thought their captain was being booked for the trip on Neymar. It had not been easy to see the kick.
Suddenly, however, the yellow was returned to his pocket and the red card appeared. Brown was off.
It can be argued that the correct decision was reached in the end and that we shouldn't worry too much about the details.
However switching the cards gives an impression of weakness. Why did Lannoy swap from yellow to red? One can only assume he received a message from one of his assistants. But Lannoy was 10 yards away from the action while one assistant was at least 30 yards away and the other - completely unsighted - was 50 yards away. Fourth officials are not supposed to relay information they may have seen on a television screen, as far as I'm aware.
So who persuaded Lannoy he should change cards?
This confusion would have been easily avoided if Lannoy had kept his cards in his pocket and given himself a little breathing space to make his final mind up and to listen to any other views from his team.
Lannoy was spared from serious criticism because the correct result was reached in the end, but I'm not so sure the UEFA assessor at the game will have been quite as generous.

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