The Whistle Van Persie Said He Never Heard

Camp Nou, 8 March 2011, the 56th minute of the Champions League round-of-16 second leg. Arsenal had won the first leg 2–1. Messi had scored in first-half stoppage time, Busquets' own goal in the 53rd had made it 1–1, and the tie stood at 3–3 on aggregate with one away goal each — extra time, as things stood. Cesc Fàbregas played a ball over the top for Robin van Persie, who controlled it inside the area. The assistant's flag went up for offside and Massimo Busacca whistled. Van Persie, already booked, struck the ball into the side netting. Replays timed the gap between whistle and shot at about one second.

Busacca showed a second yellow card for kicking the ball away after play had stopped, and Van Persie was sent off. His first booking had come on the stroke of half-time for pushing Dani Alves during a stoppage while Jack Wilshere lay injured. Xavi scored in the 69th minute and Messi converted an undisputed penalty in the 71st after Koscielny tripped Pedro. Barcelona won 3–1, 4–3 on aggregate.

One second. Van Persie's own reaction on hearing the timing was that it made the decision worse: 'If there was four, five or six seconds in between, if you make a chip or something, I could understand, but this way, one second from his whistle to my shot is just a joke.' A striker completing a shooting motion is not the scenario the delaying-the-restart law was written for; the guideline targets players who kick the ball away to waste time or provoke. Van Persie was trying to score in a Champions League tie, in a stadium where, as he put it, 'how can I hear his whistle with 95,000 people jumping up?'

The prosecution's second point is proportion. Referees have discretion over cautions, and a second yellow in a knockout tie is a match-changing sanction. Goal's decision-by-decision review of Busacca's night criticised the card alongside two other calls that went against Arsenal. Arsène Wenger said Arsenal could have won at eleven against eleven and that UEFA officials he spoke to afterwards were 'shocked as well'. Barcelona scored twice within fifteen minutes of the dismissal.

The law is the defence, and it is not a weak one. The whistle had gone; the ball was kicked after it; kicking the ball away after the referee has stopped play is a listed example of delaying the restart, a cautionable offence; and a second caution is a sending-off. Busacca did not invent a rule. He applied one, quickly and without ceremony, which is what Wenger meant when he complained about 'how quickly he did it'.

The defence also notes that Van Persie had put himself in the referee's book with an unnecessary shove at half-time, that Busacca had refereed a Champions League final and two World Cups and was months from becoming FIFA's head of refereeing, and that nothing else in the tie's decisive moments was disputed: the penalty for Koscielny's foul on Pedro was clear, and Barcelona were dominant before the card as well as after it. Harsh is not the same as wrong.

Law 12 in 2010/11 listed seven cautionable offences, including 'delaying the restart of play', and seven sending-off offences, including 'receiving a second caution in the same match'. The referees' guidelines gave 'kicking the ball away or carrying it away with the hands after the referee has stopped play' as an example of delaying the restart. Second yellow cards were not reviewable under any later VAR protocol either, so this is one of the archive's cases where even modern technology would have left the decision with the on-field referee.

Arsenal played the last thirty-five minutes with ten men. Xavi scored in the 69th, Messi from the spot in the 71st, and the aggregate finished 4–3 to Barcelona. UEFA charged Wenger and Samir Nasri with improper conduct for their comments and banned each for one match, fining Wenger €10,000. Guardiola said Wenger had told him to congratulate the referee. Busacca retired that summer to run refereeing development at FIFA. The tribunal's VAR Replay scenario starts at the 56th minute, level on aggregate, with history scripted to score twice; in this tie, finishing level is enough.