I was having a good natured discussion about this with some mates who support other teams and they, annoyingly, kept spouting the same shite about how “Rice kicked the ball away so it’s a yellow, it’s his fault”. True, and if a yellow is given then you can’t argue with it from a strictly technical perspective.
However, there is a sequence of events leading up to Rice nudging the ball away that should not be ignored. In addition, the ref has let Pedro get away with a far more egregious example of booting the ball away.
It’s a scandalous decision and the ref is a bona fide cunt.
Letter of law… be honest a lot of them didn’t even know this term before this incident.
All they know was just throwing this term out and to justify Rice was wrong.
Their ignorance and hate blinded their common sense.
I’ve deliberately taken a “step back” from this and didn’t want to comment when being in an angry state. Most of the times this helps with seeing a situation more clearly and “understanding” what led to a certain decision. But fuck that, I get more angry each time I see the situation.
I can not for the life of me understand how this was a sending off. Regardless of Rice kicking the ball over the sideline, the ball was in movement before the defenders kick. It would have been a wrongly taken free kick, the ball isn’t even in play! Since it isn’t in play, all he does is kick Rice down from behind.
