I’m writing against the grain of popular opinion; I think that Ben Williams got it spot on in sending off Sydney FC defender Nikola Petković in the FFA Cup quarter final against Adelaide.
Since the Sydney FC vice-captain launched his boot into Fabio Ferreira, he has received a lot of support from the football fraternity.
Graham Arnold called it an embarrassment, match commentators Mike Cockerill and Robbie Slater said it was harsh, while Fox Sports pundit Mark Bosnich called for it to be rescinded.
The general complaints included Petković was making an attempt to control the ball, that Petković tried to pull out before contact and that the Williams allowed advantage to be played before issuing the red card.
If these are the best complaints that the above can think of, they need to head down to their nearest Specsavers for an eye check.
For starters, no-one from Adelaide United accused Petković of making a deliberate attempt to injure Ferreira. However, the camera shows Petković’s foot got nowhere near the ball and his studs landed in Ferreira’s leg.
The contact was high, late and contained sufficient force to injure an opposing player. While the tackle was not deliberate, it’s dangerous play, which is a red card. If the action of the Sydney FC defender was repeated in a situation where the ball was being played on the floor, he would have broken Fabio Ferreira’s leg.
The Petković challenge is similar to the one that saw Nani sent off in a Champions League tie two years ago.
As Roy Keane explained on ITV at the time, players need to be aware of other players on the field and dangerous acts, no matter how intentional or unintentional they are, are red card offences. It applies in the action of Petković that while not deliberate, it was dangerous and gave the referee justification to send him off.
Secondly, at no time did Nikola Petković try and properly pull out of that challenge. If he had, his leg would have been bent and the toes of his boot would have been facing down. As both Fox Sports angles show, the leg of Petković was slightly bent while the studs of his boot were clearly facing out and he continued to zone in at a reasonable speed.
Again, while Petković didn’t set out to deliberately injure Ferreira, there’s no way he made a conscious attempt to pull out. He left his studs up and continued at pace to make a challenge.
Ben Williams, from his angle at the centre circle just behind Fabio Ferreira, would have seen a straight leg with studs up flying into an opposing player.
Finally, all arguments against the attack lost their legitimacy when belligerents failed to correctly define the rule of advantage which gives referees the opportunity to continue play. Law 5 of the FIFA Rule Book does state that in most cases, play should be halted if the referee wishes to expel a player from the ground.
However, referees have the ability to allow advantage if the attacking team has an opportunity to score provided they immediately issue a red card once play has stopped. As the video clip below shows, once the challenge was made, the ball fell to Cirio who ran to the by-line before knocking the ball back to Jeggo who sent his shot into Sydney Harbour.
No sooner had the ball sailed over the crossbar did Ben Williams immediately head for Nikola Petković and issue a red card to him. Adelaide actually created a reasonable goal-scoring chance, which gave Williams latitude to allow advantage before issuing a red card.
I have uploaded the Adelaide-Sydney highlights (controversy starts about 1:03), along with the Roy Keane video explaining why Nani was sent off, so you can make your own judgement.
Nikola Petkovic was not being deliberately malice but his challenge was high, late and could have been avoided. For that reason, Ben Williams got his decision spot on.
Twitter: @JohnHunt1992
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