Ouch!
Every now and then, footballers mistime tackles. It happens. You slide in a couple of seconds late, you catch your man, you hold your hand up and you carry on.
Occasionally you might catch an opponent with your elbow while jumping for a header – that happens too. It happens all the time if you’re Fellaini but it’s okay because he doesn’t seem to know you’re actually not allowed to elbow people.
You might even take someone down on purpose too. Football is a contact sport and it’s often cynical whether you like it or not.
But very rarely does anything happen on a football pitch quite as violent as the tackle that took place in Argentina when Los Andes played Club Atlético Brown on Saturday.
Martín Minadevino was shown a red card after half an hour for – and this is not an exaggeration – almost decapitating an opponent.
He seemed to have no awareness of his surroundings, as he lifted his foot to head height and caught in the face.
HOLY SHIT pic.twitter.com/iB9rzxN6rQ
— Daniel Edwards 💚 (@DanEdwardsGoal) March 25, 2018
Incredibly, he complained to the referee that the tackle did not merit a red card.
You’d hope the Argentine governing body hand out a long ban at the very least for this act of recklessness – some people are going as far as saying the tackle merits a prison sentence, although definitely tongue-in-cheekly.
And hopefully the victim of this horror challenge makes a quick recovery and escapes without any major injury.
