‘Could have ended Palmer’s career’ – Football International

In England there was great surprise that Lisandro Martínez was not sent off the field at Manchester United against Chelsea on Sunday. According to former Premier League referee Keith Hackett, strict action must be taken against this.

In injury time of the match between Manchester United and Chelsea, the former Ajax player planted his studs on Cole Palmer’s knee. Martínez got off with a yellow card, which was a surprise afterwards. “Football must ban reckless tackles like Martínez’s,” Hackett wrote in his column in The Telegraph.

‘The Manchester United player only received a yellow card, but it was a clear foul and VAR should have called the referee aside. This should have been red. You must intervene against this before a player becomes seriously injured. He could have ended Palmer’s career.’

Hackett was certainly not the only one who thought it was a red card. ‘Unsurprisingly, Sky Sports pundits Roy Keane, Frank Lampard and Jamie Redknapp all came to the same conclusion. Palmer was lucky the contact wasn’t more intense than this.’ Keane called it ‘a nasty tackle’. ‘Of course I’m always careful about criticizing players for tackles because I’ve done stupid things in the past. But that kid is a lucky guy,” he said of Palmer.

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