Kicking a man who's already on the floor is one of the easiest red cards in football to call. There's no angle, no slow-motion replay that saves it. In the third minute of stoppage time at Pendik Stadium on November 4, Fenerbahce's Ali Demirbilek, a substitute, kicked out at Liverpool's Ollie O'Connor while O'Connor was down on the turf. It's violent conduct. The referee got it right, and anyone trying to relitigate the decision is wasting time.
People want to argue about whether O'Connor flopping around like he'd been shot undercuts the incident. It doesn't change anything about Demirbilek's punishment. A weak kick is still a kick. A theatrical fall from the victim doesn't make the kicker's leg stay down. You can roll your eyes at the reaction and still understand that the rulebook doesn't grade violent conduct on how convincingly the other guy sells it. Demirbilek loses control, lashes out at a prone opponent, and he's responsible for his own boot. Full stop.
The people screaming "clear red, end of story" lose me here, though. O'Connor played a part in this too. After winning a free-kick, with his side cruising, he put a finger to his lips and shushed an opponent who'd just watched his team get run ragged at home. That's petty needling, the kind that exists to drag someone into exactly the mistake Demirbilek then made. This Is Anfield's description of the incident frames O'Connor as a player who didn't help himself. He didn't.
Two things are true at once, and pretending otherwise is how this discourse rots. Demirbilek deserves the suspension and the criticism, because he committed a dangerous act against a player who couldn't protect himself. O'Connor deserves the earful for goading a kid into it when the game was long since won. One of those is worse. Both of them are embarrassing. If you can't hold both ideas in your head at once, that's on you.
Forget the national cartoons, the snarling foreign thug and the diving English cheat. This is a correct red card for a genuinely reckless act, provoked by an opponent who should have known better and chose to be a nuisance instead. Liverpool came out of the night in a comfortable spot in the Youth League's league phase, with matches still to play. It was a good result soured by two players who both decided to make themselves the story.
Demirbilek pays with the card and the ban. O'Connor should at least have the decency to feel stupid about his part in it.
