Francisco Conceição got himself sent off against Norway for giving the referee a thumbs up, and every argument you're having about it is the wrong one. The booking was legal. Dissent by word or gesture is written into the laws of the game as a cautionable offence, and a sarcastic thumbs up aimed straight at an official is dissent by gesture. On paper, the referee has cover. That's exactly the problem.
Here's the sequence. Portugal were about to bring Conceição off in the closing minutes at the Estádio do Dragão, with Pedro Neto ready on the touchline. The referee booked Conceição for dawdling on his way off. Conceição responded with the thumbs up. Second yellow, red card, Portugal down to ten men with the game still to be seen out. They won anyway, 2-1, Cancelo and Gonçalo Ramos overturning Ajer's opener to keep a perfect group going and send Jorge Jesus's side through to the quarter-finals. The forward's night ended with him trudging off while the rest of the bench sat on their hands.
It wasn't fair. The referee followed the letter of the law; the problem is how unevenly that law gets enforced everywhere else. You've watched whole squads surround an official, scream in his face and chase him forty yards, and walk away with nothing. You've watched captains lecture referees for a full minute without a sniff of a caution. The biggest names in the sport roll their eyes and talk back, and nothing happens. A thumbs up, silent and sarcastic, turns out to be the single most punishable thing a footballer can do, because it's tidy and it happens right in front of the camera. The gesture that got carded was milder than the behaviour that goes unpunished every single weekend.
That's the whole rotten logic of dissent policing: it punishes whichever gesture lands loudest on camera. A referee who lets ten men scream at him and then reaches for a second yellow over a thumbs up is protecting his own pride. He's picked the smallest possible target to do it.
Conceição knew better. A player that experienced knows a thumbs up after a booking is a textbook second yellow, and he gave it anyway, which was stupid, fine. He authored a bit of his own downfall. But a competition that lets genuine abuse slide and then sends a man off for a hand gesture runs on mood.
Until the same referees who dismissed Conceição start booking the swarms and the screamers with the same itchy fingers, this card means nothing except that one official had a long night and a short fuse. The rule is real. The way it was used here was a tantrum with a whistle attached.
