Some Brawlers Have Sentences Reduced on Appeal, Others Not So Lucky

By: Martha | March 28th, 2007

Fight! Fight! After hearings today, Inter’s Maicon and Ivan Cordoba had their suspensions for that whole Valenica throwdown reduced — clearly UEFA’s disciplinary committee is a bunch of sentimental old fools who were seduced by the mere presence among them of such footballing luminaries. That said, though, things didn’t go quite so well for their friend Nicolas Burdisso, he of the smash-in nose, who found himself looking at even more time out than he’d originally thought.

Ironically, Cordoba was the only one of the Inter gang not to turn up for the hearing — he’s on international duty. Everyone else was there, though, which means the committee looked Burdisso right in the eye and said “And as for you, Mr. OhMyNose, we’ve had a another look at the tape and not only will you be missing the six matches in the original punishment, but if you don’t behave over the next two years, there’s two more where those came from.” And then they gave the Nelson laugh, just to add insult to injury. For his part, whatever Maicon said clearly worked because his suspension was cut from six games to three (sort of — ala Burdisso, if he behaves for the next 24 months, the remaining three games will go away), while Cordoba somehow managed to be persuasive from a great distance and, assuming there are no further incidents, he will now only miss the team’s next two UEFA-sanctioned games, rather than three. Julio Cruz, meanwhile, will miss the two games he was originally given — no deferrals for him.