The Zidane Incident

[Schneed10]

Originally Posted by ArtMonkDrillz

Maybe saying he could have killed him is going a bit overboard, but he definitely could have cracked his sternum. I knew a kid in high school that cracked his own sternum during a wrestling match on a simple take down. If you hit it right it's going to crack, and that headbutt realy could have done some damage.

Plus, I feel like that incident was seperate from all the obvious flopping that goes on in soccer. No matter how you look at it, Zidane blatantly broke the rules and he had to face the consequences for that. Also, the ref has to kick a player out for an action like that in order to maintain order in the game. If Zidane had been allowed to stay in I'd be willing to bet a ton that a fight would have quickly broken out.

You're right. I agree that specific incident merited an ejection. It was a blatant attack on a player. A physical attack like that is worse than spitting and deserves an ejection.

I guess I just take issue with the rule in general. It's set up to encourage instigation of this type of response. I think Soccer should do it like either Football or Hockey. If you're going to eject a player for something like this, let the team replace him, don't give a man-advantage for the rest of the game. Or at least have a penaty box where you have the man-advantage for only 5 or 10 minutes.