Cristiano Ronaldo has been suspended five games for his preposterous red card and subsequent push of a referee in Sunday’s Spanish Super Cup first leg. Ronaldo was sent off two minutes after scoring a screamer to put Real Madrid 2-1 up on Barcelona. He was shown a first yellow for taking off his shirt in celebration, then shown a second minutes later for diving. After a disbelieving Ronaldo saw the red card come out of the referee’s pocket, he threw his hands up in exasperation, then chased after the referee and he pushed him in the back.
The Spanish Football Federation hit Ronaldo with a typical one-match ban for the red card, but added an additional four games for the shove. Ronaldo, who has received 10 red cards in his career, was also fined $4,483. “The authority and the safety of the referee deserves the utmost respect and cannot be challenged”, the Spanish federation said in the judgment, “even in the hypothetical situation of having made a wrong decision”. Ronaldo has 10 days to appeal the suspension. Real Madrid has already said it will appeal the second yellow card, and thus the red, but a successful appeal would merely slash the length of the ban from five games to four. And Ronaldo has little grounds for a rescinding of the penalty for the shove. The Spanish federation’s disciplinary rules call for a ban of between four and 12 matches for anything that can be characterized as at least “slightly violent” behavior toward a referee, so Ronaldo’s suspension is as short as the by-laws allow for. Here is the portion article 96 from the Spanish federation’s disciplinary code, translated to English, which concerns “slight violence toward referees” by players: “Pulling, pushing or shaking, or a general attitude toward the officials, even if only slightly violent, without confirming an aggressive attitude on [the official’s] part, will be punished with a suspension of four to 12 games”.
Source: Yahoo Sports