In two trigger-happy minutes, referee Ovidiu Hagetan booked Basaksehir’s Mahmut Takdemir and Rafael for robust challenges on Neymar and Mitchel Bakker respectively.
He also showed a yellow card to the Basaksehir coach Okan Buruk for complaining that no action had been taken when Presnel Kimpembe had made an equally agricultural challenge on one of his players.
In the stands near the touchline, Buruk’s assistant, Pierre Webo, was venting his fury in the cold night air.
However Hagetan showed the former Cameroon international a red card - after the now notorious chinwag with his fellow Romanian, Sebastian Coltescu, who allegedly used Webo’s colour as the sole criterion to identify him.
Game over
Less than a quarter of an hour into one of the showpiece matches of the European football season, indiscipline, idiocy and incompetence had triumphed.
And then those of us in the stadium witnessed the explosion of the compound.
Basaksehir players - orchestrated by substitute Demba Ba - gathered on the touchline to hear the grievances. Several PSG players formed around Neymar and Kylian Mbappé to listen into the bad tidings. A few metres off the melee, Marco Verratti practised keepie-uppies to stay warm as the Uefa match supervisor entered the fray between boards trumpeting the joys of “Respect” and “Equal Game”.
After both sets of players walked off, European football’s governing body Uefa, which organises the Champions League tournament, promised to hold a deep and thorough investigation into what went on. And why not?
There are many layers to negotiate. What atrocities did Webo utter to provoke the red card? What was so different about Kimpembe’s scything tackle? What was the racist intent in Coltescu’s words?
Pardon
Uefa said on Wednesday Webo’s sanction would be lifted during the investigation allowing him to sit in the stands for the resumption of the game on Wednesday night.
An odd response after replacing the entire Tuesday night refereeing team and installing another crew led by the Dutch official Danny Makkelie.
What makes Webo the innocent party so quickly? It is possible that his comments warranted his exclusion and that it was wrong to refer to him in a derogatory manner.
Did the referee dismiss him just because he was black? Possibly. Unlikely though. Did Hagetan admonish him for inappropriate comments from a black man? Possibly. But again unlikely.
Reaction
What appears to be happening as the teams prepare for Part II is reactions are overtaking the hard facts.
Has Uefa already condemned Coltescu? Is it lowering its requirements for ethnic minority coaches and players because it wants to be seen to be fighting racism? Such inconsistency won’t actually aid the battle. The standards have to be equal.
Due to the French government’s ban on crowds in stadiums as part of the fight to stem the coronavirus pandemic, fans were not in the stadium.
Had they been there, Webo’s comments would have probably been submerged in the cheering and jeering that accompany football matches.
The silence has launched a long overdue conversation.
