Nothing was happening in the calm and warm Mendoza night. Independent Rivadavia and Riestra They were in charge of closing the Professional League championship that had Gustavo Quinteros’ Vélez as the winner last Sunday. There were no differences in the game between these two teams, with no chance of any fight and the result was stuck at 0 to 0 (and that’s how it ended). Until at the end of the first half the controversies began for everyone.
What happened? Of everything. First, the local defender, Iván Villalba, jumped to reject a header, but the Riestra striker, Gustavo Fernández, went with his elbow on the rival’s forehead. The man in Alfredo Berti’s painting was left lying down and quickly noticed that he had blood.
The referee, Juan Pafundi, who was officiating in his fifth match in this tournament, showed Fernández the yellow card. The play did not leave many doubts. The attacker looked askance at Villalba before jumping and decided to go with a devious elbow that put the defender’s integrity at risk. And it caused a cut that caused bleeding all over his face.
Villalba went with his face covered in blood to reproach the judge for the expulsion. Pafundi waited for the VAR call. Just a few seconds later, he gave the order for the game to continue as if nothing had happened, while the defender’s head was bandaged on the side of the field.
The VAR considered that the elbow was not intentional and that it was a game action… At the very least, he should have invited the main referee to watch the play on the monitor. It was definitely for a red card. All Independiente Rivadavia protested at the end of the first half.
In the second half, the one who hit a hard hit was Tobías Ostchega on Cristian Paz. There those who complained were those from Riestra. Pafundi appealed again for the reprimand, although it also minimally merited a review of the images.
The night had even more controversies. The VAR had to intervene to disallow a header goal by Mauricio Cardillo. Because? At the beginning of the play, in the front area, Sheyko Studer had fouled Jonathan Herrera for clearly grabbing his shirt when he was facing the goal that the referee had ignored.
The point is that Herrera had started in an advanced position. Therefore, after analyzing it on the monitor, the judge annulled Independiente Rivadavia’s goal and reversed everything to sanction the offside and charge an indirect free kick in favor of the home team itself. This decision was correct since the goal was invalidated by the infraction and the infraction was in turn invalidated by offside.
To top off a crazy game, within the added 10 minutes, the fireworks were lit from all four sides, set by the leadership of Lepra Mendoza, something that forced us to wait a couple more minutes. In the end, everything ended without goals, but with controversies everywhere.