Why David Luiz Deserves FA Action

David Luiz smile

There was only 1 real talking point from Sunday’s football match, in which Chelsea grabbed a late winner thanks to a deflected Juan Mata strike.
Unfortunately again this was another of those talking points which football would rather distance itself from, after a lot of bad press with the likes of Luis Suarez’s biting of Branislav Ivanovic a few weeks back.

Yesterday’s incident involved Man United’s right back Fabio seeing the “red mist” when involved with David Luiz, a fellow Brazilian defender/midfielder, with Raphael kicking out and Luiz going down as if he’d been taken out by a sniper settled somewhere within the Old Trafford stands.
Raphael, perhaps undeservedly, saw a straight red for his challenge (perhaps a booking would have been sufficient punishment) but this wasn’t the real issue. The problem was when Luiz was pictured laying in the ground, feining injury, whilst looking towards the crowd with a huge smile on his face.

Of course, Luiz had right to be happy. His side has just taken the lead against the Premiership champions and were likely to secure a vital 3 points which could guarantee Chelsea’s position in the league to win them access to the Champions League next season. He’d also, on a personal note, won his battle with Raphael who had lost his head and lashed out at the Chelsea player. He could then feign injury, run the clock down, and play out the win. Sure, he wasn’t to know Raphael was going to be red-carded for his actions, but by laying in a heap on the floor he hardly helped the referee in his course of actions.

Too many footballers nowadays go down in a heap when they feel the slightest of contact, and many referees are unable to tell if they’re faking or not – its a tough subject to call afterall. Most players have the dignity to, at least when cheating, to do it properly and to not bring the game into disrepute. I think Luiz, in his actions, was bringing the game into disrepute. He was blatently making a mockery of the referee, and of Raphael, and at the end of the day was a bit of an embarrassment to himself and to Chelsea football club.

Unfortunately David Luiz will be unlikely to receive any kind of FA action, but that’s where the game is currently lacking some kind of guidance and structure. Currently the process with disciplinary action involves looking at the referee’s report and if he includes the incident then the FA won’t take out any action – because it would undermine the referee who saw the incident and who therefore should have taken the appropriate action (that’s their opinion anyway). But even if the referee doesn’t include it in his report, it seems as if the FA is loathed to take any action as well, perhaps because they don’t want to cloud the referee’s position, or maybe because they feel it should be the club’s duty to punish the player internally.

Sir Alex Ferguson has stated that he’s disppointed with the behaviour of David Luiz, believing that he’s gotten Raphael sent off, acting like a dying swan. He went on to question what kind of professional Luiz was. Benitez failed to comment on the incident, saying that he’s seen hundreds of incidents already this season and that this one wouldn’t make any kind of difference. I’m sure that they’d agree it doesn’t set a very good example to the millions of fans who’d have been watching around the world.

You can watch the video of the David Luiz and Raphael incident below.

By Matt

Matt is the owner and chief-editor of the Footy Blog, one of the UK's leading football news blogs.