Red Card

Mike Dean’s track record is unreal. He pioneered the Dirty South sound of the 90s while working with the Geto Boys, Nate Dogg, Tech N9ne and UGK. In recent times, he’s worked with Kanye West on all of his albums, Jay-Z, Frank Ocean and Desiigner. He’s a living legend, but Mike Dean has received a ton of criticism lately after wrongly sending off Sofiane Feghouli in Monday’s match between Manchester United and West Ham.

This is, without a doubt, the strangest sending off we’ve ever seen. FC Porto came up against Moreirense in a must-win match in the Portuguese Taca da Liga cup competition on Tuesday night. With Moreirense leading 1-0 in the 79th minute, the referee inexplicably ended any hope Porto had of advancing to the semifinals by giving Danilo Pereira his second yellow card of the match and sending him off. 

His offense? Being ran into by the referee. It’s a shockingly ridiculous decision that calls into question the integrity of everything. This guy is tripping off the power. 

Being a professional referee in the Premier League is an extremely tough job. The old adage “Who would ever want to be a referee?” rings particularly true in the EPL. They get more abuse than we as fans care to admit, and every single one of us has been guilty of being on the wrong side of a decision before viewing the instant replay.

Video replay made its first appearance in the world of football at the FIFA Club World Cup in Japan. We all appreciate FIFA for at least willing to experiment the replay system and see how it would work, but it’s fair to say that escalated quickly.

It’s been more than 10 years since that infamous night in Berlin, where, in the 110th minute of Zinedine Zidane’s final professional match, the French captain was sent off for battering Marco Materazzi with his bald head.

Jamie Vardy’s dismissal on Saturday for his lunge on Mame Biram Diouf was predicated on everything but the tackle itself. Having lost the ball to Glen Johnson in the buildup, that particular spirit that invokes images of Skittles Vodka and murmurs of “Chat Shit Get Banged” could be felt through televisions around the globe: Vardy, looking like Pokemon’s Rattata with Red Bull coursing through his mouse veins, was probably about to do something he’d regret.

Saturday’s match between Bundesliga leaders RB Leipzig and relegation-threatened FC Ingolstadt was remarkable in that the team at the bottom pulled off a highly improbable 1-0 upset. 

What was exceedingly exceptional was what transpired in second half stoppage time. Referee Markus Schmidt, who’d apparently just put down Niccolo Machiavelli’s The Prince before running out to officiate this match, showed that it is indeed safer to be feared than loved.

Given the way in which David Luiz was tackled by Sergio Aguero at the weekend and considering the short fuse on Luiz himself, many people were expecting an angry reaction from the Brazilian. As it turns out, that couldn't have been further from the truth.

It simply doesn’t get any more embarrassing or unprofessional than this. Trailing Sheffield Wednesday 2-1 in the English Championship on Saturday, Preston had both their strikers sent off in the final minutes after nearly coming to blows and being separated by teammates.

Eoin Doyle had halved the Preston deficit in the 82nd minute, but he and strike partner Jermaine Beckford were subsequently shown straight reds for violent conduct in the 90th minute.