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Mexican referee sets red card record
Posted: Sunday July 05, 1998 09:30 AM
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Carter (yellow shirt) has handed out seven red cards in six matches (AP) |
PARIS (Reuters) -- Mexican referee Arturo Brizio Carter broke a red card
record in sending off Argentina's
Ariel Ortega and Dutch defender Arthur Numan in a World Cup quarterfinal
but earned praise from FIFA on Sunday.
"Brizio Carter has now sent off seven players in his six World Cup matches
and has thereby put himself ahead of the pack, as it were," said FIFA
spokesman Keith Cooper.
That shattered the record set by French referee Joel Quiniou who sent off
five players in an eight-match career-- still the most games handled at a
World Cup.
Quiniou also still holds the record for the fastest World Cup dismissal--
Uruguay's Jose Batista after 55 seconds in a first-round match against Scotland in
1986.
Brizio Carter made his World Cup debut with the 1994 opener between Germany and
Bolivia in Chicago.
He sent off Bolivian substitute Marco Etcheverry four minutes after the
player had come on in the second half.
In his next match in San Francisco he dismissed Cameroon's
Rigobert Song after 63 minutes against Brazil. Just 17,
Song was the youngest man ever sent off.
Brizio Carter completed his USA '94 hat trick by dismissing Italian forward
Gianfranco Zola after 76 minutes against Nigeria. The
player, celebrating his 28th birthday, had only been on the pitch for 12
minutes.
In France,
the Mexican caused an immediate stir by sending off the hosts' big star
Zinedine Zidane for stomping on an opponent in a first-round match against
Saudi
Arabia, who also had Mohamed al-Khilaiwi dismissed.
Juventus midfielder Zidane was suspended for two matches and returned to
help France reach the semifinals.
The dismissal of Ortega in Marseille on Saturday drew strong support from
FIFA.
The Argentine was booked for taking a dive in the Dutch penalty area with
the score at 1-1 and was then shown an immediate red card for headbutting
the Dutch goalkeeper.
Cooper made clear that Ortega had been sent off for a direct red card, not
for collecting a second yellow.
"His reaction was absolutely correct," he said of Brizio's response to
Ortega's dive. "It's cheating and it's a yellow card."
Cooper said FIFA was concerned about players trying to hoodwink referees by
diving and faking and it was something the officials needed to tackle
firmly.
"A lot of players are damned good at it and it's not very easy to
distinguish between a genuine foul and a dive," he said.
Cooper said FIFA totally condemned an unnamed World Cup coach who was
reported to have told his players: "If you get a chance, do it [take a
dive]."
As far as FIFA was concerned, there was no great significance in Brizio
Carter sending off so many players.
"I don't think it has anything to do with the referee in question, Brizio
Carter. It just happens to be that he was in the wrong place at the wrong
time or the right place at the right time, whichever way you want to look
at it," said Cooper.
"He happens to have refereed a large number of games so obviously the
chances increase.
"Whether we are worried about it, no. He's refereed to the best of his
ability, called the actions as he's seen them, taken the sanctions that
he's held appropriate. That is his position, we'll stand by that,"
Germany's Christian Woerns, also sent off in the other quarterfinal against
Croatia on
Saturday, described the dismissal as a joke, while coach Berti Vogts was
reported to have questioned the referee's impartiality.
Copyright 2003 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
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