And that's where I'm struggling with this one, aside from the oft stated fact that I don't like these acts of cheating.I've been in this debate before about the old taking one for the team business and have always been in the football expects camp, which is that rightly or wrongly, players "taking one for the team" is an expected part of football.
This one is not as egregious as other examples that we have seen in the past though however....
This one ticks all the SFP boxes for me. High, late, lunge, endangering safety, air borne etc. Literally all the buzz words.
Fail to see how it was deemed C&O never mind got as far as being over turned.
If I see a player that high off the ground in normal play alarm bells are immediately ringing. Once airborne like that you have absolutely zero control of your body and therefore where you are going to land or where you are going to hit the opponent. It simply becomes a lottery. When you also factor in that the ball was in a different postcode I just don't see how it can be anything other than red, and even if the VAR agrees there is no possible way that it can be called a clear and obvious error.
The irony here is that if it had badly injured a flagship player like De Bruyne, whether through the contact or his subsequent fall, the reaction would have been entirely different. It would no longer be expected as part of the game, and rather there'd be demand for a crackdown.