California Personal Injury Lawyers Blog

Previously, a Los Angeles personal injury attorney gave some background into the superclasico soccer games between Real Madrid and Barcelona. In part two, we will give a more in depth legal analysis of the series of games. In the second game, the final of the Copa Del Rey, Real Madrid came into the game with the same intent of destroying Barcelona’s play with dangerous fouls and dirty play. At one point, Alvaro Arbeloa, a defender for Real Madrid, elbowed and then intentionally stepped on the leg of Barcelona striker David Villa. The referee did not see the assault, so Arbeloa got away with it. While normal fouling is part of the game, intentionally stepping on a down player’s legs, with cleats, is not and should not be considered part of the game. This is more comparable to criminal assault, as it is an intentional act with the sole intention of causing bodily harm.

In order for sports competition to be exciting, it is usually best to keep the legal world out of what happens on the field of play. However, certain instances, that should not be part of the game, deserve to be punished legally. For instance, in hockey, when a player intentionally swings his stick at another player’s head from behind, the injured player should not be assuming the risk of such an assault. In football, it can be expected that there are times when a player’s face mask will get pulled, but eye gouging a down player is not “part of the game.” Here, a stomp on a down player’s leg is not part of the game and could cause serious injury. Should this be any different than if this happened outside the stadium, in a public area, where the attacker would be subject to criminal or civil liability for the personal injury he has caused?

In the third game between the teams, this time in the UEFA Champions League, a Real Madrid player, Marcelo, had a similar intentional stomp on the leg of a Barcelona player, Pedro Rodriguez. While David Villa was able to recover and keep playing after he was stomped on, Pedro suffered a knee injury and had to leave the game. The culprit, Marcelo, was not punished as again the referee did not see the attack.

There are numerous reasons that such assaults exist, including the fact that players know that if committed away from the referee’s eyes, they will usually avoid any form of punishment. If suspensions, fines, or criminal or civil charges could be brought after the game, such attacks certainly would occur less frequently, if at all.

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Normally, the worlds of European soccer and California personal injury do not intertwine. However, April and May of 2011 witnessed an historic set of events in world soccer; four matches between arch rivals Barcelona and Real Madrid, played over only 18 days. Most seasons only see two matches between the two giant Spanish soccer clubs, called the “Superclasico.” In this rare instance, the matches occurred in three different competitions, the Spanish league, the European Champions League and the Spanish Copa Del Rey (King’s Cup).

When the two teams met earlier in the season, at Barcelona’s Camp Nou stadium, both teams came to play and Barcelona emerged as 5-0 victors. In an attempt to prevent similar embarrassing losses in the four crucial games in April and May of 2011, Jose Mourinho, the coach of Real Madrid, employed certain questionable tactics that will be analyzed here from the point of view of a Los Angeles personal injury attorney.

In the first three games, Mourinho put out an ultra-defensive lineup which, while not illegal, was designed to frustrate his opponents and ruin the spectacle that a soccer match is supposed to provide. However, besides playing defensively, many of Real Madrid’s players seemed to come out with intent to cause personal injury to the Barcelona players.

Mourinho seemed to employ a clear strategy of starting the games with his players kicking and fouling Barcelona players, because in the opening minutes of a game, the referee is less likely to punish such offenses. Fouling, in itself, is part of a soccer game, and is comparable to a foul in a basketball game. However, the difference in soccer is that with the strength of a professional soccer player’s legs, combined with the cleats they wear on their feet, many fouls can cause serious injury (including ligament damage, fractured bones, etc.) to an opponent. For this reason, referees can grant yellow cards for certain fouls (2 yellow cards and the player receives a red card and is ejected and misses the next game) or direct red cards for more serious fouls.

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