Four Real Madrid players walking the yellow card suspension tightrope

So much relating to Real Madrid’s season hinges on the game at the Bernabeu on Wednesday. Alvaro Arbeloa’s men will play the second leg of the playoffs against Jose Mourinho’s Benfica. The LaLiga side hold a slender 1-0 advantage from the first leg in Lisbon but memories of the group stage win for the Portuguese side are still fresh in the mind.

Four players one card from suspension

Although five yellow cards are needed to trigger a suspension in LaLiga, it works differently in Europe. In the Champions League, as well as in the rest of UEFA competitions, since it is a tournament with a much smaller number of matches, if a player receives three yellow cards, they will already be suspended for card accumulation.

In the Real Madrid squad currently there are a total of four players one yellow card away from suspension who would miss the first leg of the Round of 16 should Los Blancos progress against Benfica. Three of them already had two yellow cards going into the first leg: Bellingham, Tchouameni, and Huijsen, but none were booked. However, Vinicius did receive a yellow card, thus adding him to the list of players one yellow card away from suspension and the English player and Spain international are ruled out of the Wednesday game through injury.

When are the cards cleaned?

As stated in UEFA Article 63, the first suspension comes after the third yellow card. However, from that point on, the cycles are reduced to two yellow cards, so the 5th, 7th, 9th... yellow cards will also result in a one-match suspension. Furthermore, since the 2014/15 season, all yellow cards are cleared after the quarter-finals. This rule was implemented to prevent any player from missing the final due to accumulated yellow cards, as happened to Xabi Alonso in 2014.

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