One of the contentious incidents during yesterday’s Juventus versus Sassuolo match revolved around the referee’s decision not to eject Domenico Berardi from the game, despite his clear and deliberate stamp on Gleison Bremer.
Fortunately, the Brazilian defender escaped serious injury from this incident.
Berardi’s foul was unquestionably deserving of a red card, and numerous Juventus players vociferously called for the referee to take this action. However, the referee ultimately brandished only a yellow card to the Sassuolo player, a decision that left many baffled.
In a surprising turn of events, VAR did not step in to review the incident, even though the foul had the potential to cause Bremer a severe and long-lasting injury.
Former referee Luca Marelli has shed some light on why VAR did not intervene, despite his personal opinion that a red card should have been issued.
He said, as quoted by Football Italia:
“The incident deserves to be evaluated carefully, because there are good reasons why all these decisions were made.
“VAR can only intervene to correct a clear and obvious error, which in this case was not warranted. Considering that Berardi’s knee was bent when he made contact with the shin and that there was not a great deal of power behind it, there was insufficient evidence to overturn the decision made by the referee.
“Having said that, I personally would’ve given a red card and felt that the referee should have punished this with a dismissal, but he evaluated the incident on the field and that is what will remain.”
Juve FC Says
That stamp on Bremer is the type of foul that gets players banned for a very long time and Bremer is lucky it did not cause major damage to his leg
We lost the game and should focus on winning our next match instead of wondering what we could have done differently in the last one.
