Even on Swiss TV: Dzemaili, Ganz and colleagues on Swiss television criticise the referee over Kelly’s red card: it’s disgraceful!

Here is the translation (hopefully accurate) of what they said:

Referees often haven’t played football and don’t really understand — almost none of them have played at a professional level. If you jump, you have to land, and if there’s a foot underneath… what is Kelly supposed to do? [laughter]

Honestly, I don’t think the issue is whether a referee has played football, because referees today review countless videos and situations at these levels. They start refereeing when they’re kids, so they’ve seen everything. Like Giacomo says, a jockey doesn’t have to be a horse — you don’t need to have played to be a good referee.

With VAR — as Arrigo Sacchi used to say back before VAR existed — the referee gives a foul, I’m not even sure he gives a yellow, and something that wasn’t a yellow ends up becoming a straight red. Say Juve go through and Kelly gets a two-match ban — that’s a double mistake. I can accept that a stamp on the foot might be a yellow, but this is just a player jumping and not even realizing he caught the opponent.

It’s embarrassing, to me. Even a yellow would be embarrassing. A red is impossible to justify. VAR stepping in and telling the referee to send him off… he’s going up for a header, the ball is high, he’s watching the ball, so when he lands, if the opponent is underneath, what can he do?

I checked the Laws of the Game to understand how this could be explained. Serious foul play that leads to a red card is a tackle or challenge that endangers an opponent’s safety, and it must involve excessive force or brutality. Here there’s neither excessive force nor brutality.