Too harsh a red for de Jong. Should the referee have sent off the Barcelona midfielder for that?

Barcelona lost again in La Liga, this time failing to overcome Cadiz. They drew 0:0 on the field of the underdog, the match was complicated by the exclusion of Frenkie de Jong. But was the red card done correctly?

The Catalan big club is in a big crisis in the last days, rather months. In La Liga, it has only managed to win two out of five games, and has drawn the other three. In the Champions League, they lost 0:3 to Bayern Munich.

Against Cadiz, Depay could have put the visitors in front in the 51st minute, but he blew his chance from a small area.

And the game got even more complicated for Barcelona in the 66th minute when Frenkie de Jong was shown his second yellow card and had to take a shower. The first caution came in the 61st minute.

However, there was much debate in Spain as to whether this was indeed a red card. There should be no distinction between a yellow card and a second yellow card, which means an expulsion, but this really wasn’t even a regular yellow card.

The Dutch footballer played the ball, tipped the ball away before contact to avoid hitting the Cadiz player. There was nothing more he could have done to avoid contact. But Espino, probably knowing that de Jong already had one card, did it smartly and even with a little bit of coaxing forced the referee to pull out a second yellow card.

Thus, a key player in Barcelona’s midfield will be missed by Ronald Koeman for the next game against Levante. However, the Blaugranas coach will be sitting in the stands next to his charge as he also saw a red card in the 96th minute.

Source: Twitter, Livesport