The Red Card Before Messi Took Over

Santiago Bernabéu, 27 April 2011, the first leg of the Champions League semifinal and the third Clásico in eighteen days. It was 0–0 in the 61st minute, and Real Madrid had contained Barcelona for an hour. Pepe went for a loose ball as Dani Alves moved to clear it, with his boot raised and studs showing. Alves went to ground and was treated at length. Wolfgang Stark showed a straight red card. José Mourinho, on the touchline, clapped and gave the fourth official two thumbs up and was sent to the stands.

Alves was stretchered off and, by widely repeated accounts, returned to the pitch within minutes. UEFA's match report called the challenge 'a high challenge'; Sky's report said Pepe was 'perhaps unfortunate' to see red 'for raising his foot as Dani Alves went to clear'. Messi scored in the 76th minute from Afellay's cross and in the 87th after a run past four defenders from inside his own half. The second leg finished 1–1 and Barcelona went through 3–1.

The prosecution's case is about contact and context. Replays that circulated the same night were widely read as showing Pepe's studs missing Alves, or grazing him at most; the challenge was a collision between two players going for the same ball rather than a lunge at an opponent. Alves' recovery from stretcher to sprint inside a few minutes was, to Madrid's fans and to Madrid's official protest, evidence that the injury had been performed. And the context was a goalless first leg in which Madrid had a plan and the plan was working; the red card ended it, and Messi did the rest.

Mourinho's press conference gave the accusation its lasting form. Why, he asked, did every Barcelona semifinal end the same way — Øvrebø with Chelsea in 2009, Inter's 'miracle' with ten men in 2010, Stark now — and if he said what he really thought, 'my career ends today'. The archive records the question because it is the question this site exists to put to a jury. It does not adopt the insinuation.

Serious foul play does not require contact. In 2010/11, as now, a challenge that endangered the safety of an opponent or used excessive force was a sending-off offence whether or not it connected, and a raised boot with studs exposed at the height of an opponent's leg is the standard example. Stark saw the boot, the height and the danger, and the law gave him the red card. UEFA, asked to overturn it, upheld 'the referee's factual decision'.

The defence also addresses the conspiracy that hangs over the exhibit. Madrid's formal protest alleged that Barcelona's players had feigned injury to get Pepe sent off; UEFA examined it and found 'no common strategy to provoke the Real Madrid CF player'. Barcelona's own reserve goalkeeper had been sent off in the tunnel at half-time. And this was Madrid's fourth red card in four Clásicos that season, a pattern that says as much about how Mourinho's team was playing those matches as about who was refereeing them.

Law 12 in 2010/11 made serious foul play a sending-off offence, defined in the referees' guidelines as a tackle or challenge that endangered the safety of an opponent or used excessive force or brutality; a player who lunged at an opponent with one or both legs, from any direction, with excessive force was guilty of it. Contact was not an element of the offence. There was no video review; UEFA's later ruling on Madrid's protest was a disciplinary decision, not a review of the footage against a protocol.

Madrid played the final half-hour with ten men and lost 0–2; Messi's two goals effectively decided the tie before the second leg, which finished 1–1. Pepe was suspended for the return. UEFA opened cases against both clubs, rejected Madrid's two protests on 2 May, banned Mourinho for five matches — the fourth and fifth later suspended on appeal — and fined him €50,000 for his statement. A Madrid complaint alleging racial abuse of Marcelo by Busquets was dismissed for lack of evidence. The tribunal's VAR Replay scenario starts at 0–0 in the 61st minute; finishing level keeps the tie alive, and that is the win.