Bennett's shove on Alexis Sanchez

Yes I'm aware - its not in the rules but do you really believe that intent doesn't influence the decision.

Fifas rules are almost deliberately poorly worded to allow for the referees personal judgement to take precedent. And as a society (both with regards to morals and laws) intent is one of the largest factors in deciding a punishment - see the reasonable man test.

Even in football intent is taken into account, see handballs as the most obvious case but even in coming togethers you see this being applied.

It's not hard to imagine a situation where a player in slide tackling will break a players leg - does that then mean that the dangerous play law should be applied to all slide tackles. By the letter of the law, it could be but thats why the referee is there - he decides the limits of what constitutes dangerous play and as a person he will almost certainly take intent into account.

The reason, I don't see it being a yellow card. Is because the player didn't actually shove Alexis that hard (remember everything looks worse slowed down), nor did he actually do anything excessively violent such as throwing a fist or going for Alexis's face. So we can assume that the actual push didnt actually carry real danger (as opposed to say a negligent high boot).

So the danger was obviously the ditch. The thing is though we can't just say no contact when there's a possibility of causing an injury as mentioned above sliding tackles, standing tackles and headers all constitute this risk. Hell as another commenter pointed out the posts can be just as dangerous, what's the rule going to say? No competing for the ball by the posts? So I mean this call is obviously a grey area, the ref can do whatever he wants as far as I know according to the laws of the game but obviously he must also decide how strictly he enforces the dangerous play rules because all contact between players carries risk.

And its just my opinion that the card isnt needed there. Sanchez didnt seem particularly harmed and it seemed more like a freak accident than anything bennet actually did. And did the way Bennet looked at the end seem like someone who was going to do the same thing again?

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