The match was long over as a contest. Antigua & Barbuda were 5-0 up on Anguilla when Keon Greene pulled Aedan Scipio backwards by the hair near the byline. Red card. Shortly after, Shalon Knight did the exact same thing to the same forward. Red card too. Two sendings-off in twenty minutes, and the win was never in doubt.
Freddy saw the footage on his phone on Monday, between two lines of the third provincial division (Belgium’s Sunday amateur leagues) table. He turned it into a team talk.
So, tactically, at 5-0, what do you do? You rotate, you keep the ball, you put the block to sleep. Me, at 5-0, which has only happened to me once, I brought off my right-back so he could go open the clubhouse bar. That’s management. But the important bit is communication: after the first red card, you turn to the bench and tell the next man, hands are for clapping, not pulling hair. I run that on Tuesday. When we’ve got eleven, that is. These lads finished with nine, and with nine they held onto a 5-0 lead. That, I don’t do. Not yet.
The gaffer then pulled out his lineup folder, the one he won’t even lend the club delegate, and wanted a word on the officiating.
Referee, sir, I say this with all due respect: the same foul twice, the same card twice, that’s called consistency. My dressing room doesn’t need VAR, it has the club delegate, and the delegate notes everything down. Two identical fouls in twenty minutes, he’d have underlined it in red in the file and we’d still be talking about it at the bar over a bag of chips. And the forward on the other side, on as a second-half substitute, did his job: he drew in two defenders. At 36. The level has gone way up, people don’t realise.
The referee for the match was Haiti’s Wikelson Bonnet. Aedan Scipio, 36, plays for Roaring Lions FC.
It’s true, we checked: VoetbalPrimeur.be.
