FRED somehow escaped a straight red card after an apparent headbutt on Leandro Paredes. The Manchester United midfielder sparked a melee after Paris Saint-Germain’s Paredes embarrassingly collapsed to the ground holding his face. Replays clearly showed the Brazilian moved his head into the direction of the opponent. His PSG team-mates protested profusely for a straight […]
FRED somehow escaped a straight red card after an apparent headbutt on Leandro Paredes.
The Manchester United midfielder sparked a melee after Paris Saint-Germain’s Paredes embarrassingly collapsed to the ground holding his face.
Replays clearly showed the Brazilian moved his head into the direction of the opponent.
His PSG team-mates protested profusely for a straight red card as VAR reviewed the incident.
The referee then ran to the wrong side of the pitch to check the monitor before realising his error.
And it appeared certain that Fred would be given his marching orders when the referee ran onto the field with his hand in his pocket.
But to everyone’s surprise, Fred received just a yellow card much to the disbelief of PSG’s players.
It was an incident very similar to Arsenal’s Nicolas Pepe who saw red against Leeds on November 23.
Paredes wasn’t willing to let the incident lie and got his own back later in the first half when he nailed Fred with a crunching tackle, earning himself a yellow card in the process.
BT Sport pundit Rio Ferdinand believed Fred should have been sent off and said: “Fred moves his head and motions towards the player. He makes a meal of it, but in today’s game, he’s lucky to be on that pitch.”
Paul Scholes added: “He’s very lucky. He’s been involved in a couple of challenges as well. Ole might think about taking him off and bringing Van de Beek on.”
Fred was eventually sent off in the second half after a foul on ex-United man Ander Herrera resulted in a second yellow card.
Tempers between the two European rivals continued to flare at the end of the first 45 minutes in an incident between Neymar and Scott McTominay.
The Scottish midfielder appeared to step on the Brazilian after a strong challenge although only he will know if it was intentional.
Neymar made the most of it but play continued as an entertaining first half came to a close.
Neymar opened the scoring early on but the visitors were pegged back through Marcus Rashford’s deflected goal.
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