Bizarre bookings please…
Japan won 2-0 away to Thailand last night thanks to goals from Genki Haraguchi and Takuma Asano. The match was fairly uneventful: it took Thailand 70 minutes to take their first shot, which the Japanese keeper saved with his face. Japan created loads of chances again and should probably have scored more.
The most interesting moment was about half an hour in when defender Masato Morishige trapped the ball and signalled to the referee that he thought it was going flat. The referee blew his whistle, ran to Morishige, picked the ball up, squeezed it, bounced it, squeezed it and bounced it again It had rained heavily earlier and the pitch was in terrible condition, so I can understand why Morishige thought it was flat. The referee disagreed and booked him.
I’m not sure exactly what the yellow was for: timewasting? Dissent? Telling the ref how to do his job? If the latter is enforced as a booking then referees will need more stationery to note every offence.
It was certainly one of the more unusual yellow cards I’ve seen In the spirit of desperately trying to think of discussion topics to help us survive the rest of the international break, has anyone seen any other bizarre bookings recently (or not recently)?
