Bernal hit with four-game ban for headbutting Lamine Yamal

Four games. That's what the clash with Lamine Yamal that ended in a straight red card for Facundo Bernal during Betis-Barcelona is going to cost him. The RFEF's Disciplinary Committee has already resolved the case, and it didn't budge an inch from what the referee's match report stated.

Let's go over what happened. The match ended 2-5 in Barcelona's favor, but what remained up in the air was the incident in the 9th minute of the second half. According to the referee himself, Bernal "grabbed an opponent by the neck and delivered two consecutive headbutts to his face," with the ball out of play at the time. The Barcelona player, for what it's worth, didn't need medical attention and stayed on the field without further issue.

Betis didn't sit idly by. The club filed an appeal attempting to save its player, arguing that the match report contained a "manifest error" and didn't accurately reflect the prior confrontation or the yellow card shown to the Barcelona player. They asked, flat out, for the red card to be overturned. And in case that didn't work, they offered a backup plan: that the incident be judged under Article 130.2 of the Disciplinary Code, with the mitigating factor of "sufficient provocation."

The committee held firm

None of that convinced the committee. After reviewing the footage, they concluded that Bernal did exactly what the match report described. And they were pretty blunt in their ruling: "Such conduct, consisting of grabbing an opponent by the neck and delivering two consecutive headbutts to his face, with the ball out of play, constitutes an assault falling under Article 103.1 of the RFEF's Disciplinary Code, and not mere violent conduct subject to classification under Article 130.2 of the same text."

The argument that the opponent suffered no injury didn't hold up either. The committee was blunt about that too: "the absence of injury does not alter this classification." So the punishment came out to four games, which happens to be the minimum that article allows for this type of case. And since the assault was classified under that article, the committee didn't even bother addressing whether the provocation Betis claimed actually occurred.

But the disciplinary fallout from that match didn't end with Bernal. A punishment also came down for Manu Fajardo, a club official, who was hit with a two game suspension plus a fine for a reaction he had following a VAR review. The match report states that, after the review, Fajardo "kicked the ball located in the area of the fourth official, ending up striking his own leg without force." It wasn't a kick meant to cause harm, based on the account, but it still earned him the sanction for conduct contrary to proper sporting order.

Two sanctions, then, for a Betis side that walked away from that match on the wrong end of a rout and that now, on top of it, will have to cope with the absence of both its player and its official for several matchdays.