🚨 How do you suspend a player like Nahuel?
Is 11 games fair for Guzman's laser show at the Estadio BBVA?
In our #EmbraceDebate sports culture, any time there’s a suspension, the question is: Did they get it right?
But how do you work out how long to suspend Nahuel Guzman for? It felt like no suspension was too heavy for his laser-pointer antics - after all, he’s still injured and won’t play the next few games anyway, so it has to affect his team at least a little. But also you wondered if just a few games were coming - after all, nobody got hurt, and he apologized
In the end, the Mexican federation’s disciplinary committee announced an 11-game suspension for the Tigres goalkeeper.
It’s the third-longest suspension (that doesn’t involve doping or out-of-stadium events) in Liga MX history, falling short of Cristian Zermatten’s one-year suspension for headbutting a referee and referee Fernando Hernández’s 12-match ban for kneeing a player in the groin area last year.
It’s not often I have sympathy for the disciplinary committees. Typically, they don’t need sympathy. They’re basing their decisions on previous cases.
Direct red card? Two games. Contact with a referee? That’s more games. Start a fight? Flip off a fan? There’s precedent there.
A currently injured but very much active player trying to sneak a laser in so he can blind his team’s biggest rival with the green light? From the club’s own box in the rival stadium?
Yeah, that’s a new one.
“In the history of Liga MX we’ve gone through moments that fill us with pride but also moments that make us question how we must rebuild the path to have the football we want,” Liga MX president Mikel Arriola said in a video backing the decisions made by the disciplinary committee. “On the one hand, in the sporting sense, what we all saw on the field during the last Clásico Regional does represent the football we want.
“However, off the field, nothing experienced has to do with the values of our league or the clubs involved - players committing anti-sporting acts, directors overtaken by the heat of the moment and people who didn’t act like fans, attacking and lacking respect for others.”
The video went on to say that Guzman had been given “an unprecedented” sanction.
Well, yeah.
It’s pretty unprecedented behavior - and it fits in a strange category. It’s one thing for Guzman to have committed an act of violence, to have physically harmed or threatened a teammate. But while we all know shining a light is not OK and could lead to harm - it didn’t in this case - it’s not as bad as him clocking someone. Was it premeditated? Did he bring his own laser? Did someone see him and hand it to him? We might never know, and those answers sort of affect how serious the punishment should be.
Still, when the behavior is something you want out of the game, and something you’d ban a fan if they were caught doing, it’s worth a hefty sanction when one of the players themselves is participating in that behavior.
The committee cited five codes Guzman had broken, ranging from “going against Fair Play” to “inciting the public to perform improper acts” in handing down the 11-game ban.
It also issued a fine to both clubs and to Rayados goalkeeper Esteban Andrada, who used profanity in calling out Guzman’s actions.
It’s not new to see Guzman walk up to the line and dip a toe across it. Hell, we’ve basically seen Nahuel draw the line with magic spray, erase it himself and put it in a different place.
It was almost an Air Bud moment in Leagues Cup when he pulled a string out of his mouth. There’s nothing in the rulebook that says you can’t do magic tricks during a penalty shootout.
One of the things that makes Guzman such an appealing figure is that he so clearly identifies with fans. It’s OK for a player like Carlos Vela or Gareth Bale to say they have other passions, that soccer is just a job. But when a player feels the sport like us hardcore fans, they’re much easier to connect with.
Guzman also is a thoughtful player, one who likes to point out the contrasts that sometimes exist between what organizers say will happen and what actually happens in the sport. He listens to rock music. He reads philosophy.
In this case, he didn’t think deeply enough, allowing the supporter side to take over the philosophical side of his brain far too much and making a poor choice - one a member of a barra brava would make, but not one a 38-year-old professional soccer player should opt for.
Guzman has been in Liga MX for a decade, and last summer he signed an extension that will keep him with Tigres for at least a year past that.
He has to take the time he’ll have during this suspension to once again find the right balance…
….erm
Truly, Guzman crossed the line. He earned a punishment, and now he’ll serve it. Ideally he serves his punishment and better understands where the line is between what’s acceptable and what isn’t.
The sport is better with people like Guzman involved, but that’s only true if he recognizes his error and stays on the right side of the harmless/harmful spectrum.
We need more moments of fun, of brevity, of humor and fewer instances of aggression, malice and animosity.
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