Common sense should go over rules of the game? Then why on Earth did Cubarsi receive that red card?

The entire day I’ve listened into experts talking about the handball situation yesterday but seeing a clip of the discussion in the CBS Sports Golazo studio that took place after the game really pissed me off that much that it mentally forced me to write a post here. There they invited some expert arguing that it should not be a penalty. Okay, I can see some of the reasons of why it should not be a penalty but her take was basically that it’s common sense should go over strict rules and that it’s important that we don’t lose ”the spirit of game” by making these types of calls. Then she went on to how VAR and technology has made football so strict in terms of judging offsides that we need to involve common sense in some cases. I mean what the hell? If it’s offside, it’s offside. It has always been that way, now the referees just get more help detecting those situations. The same thing yesterday, if the ball comes into play, and a players grabs it with his hand, it should be a penalty. Why should common sense come over rules when ever see fit?

This also got me thinking about Cubarsi’s red card. Sure, if you follow the rulebook, it should be a red card. But what if we start looking at the situation from a ”common sense perspective”? When Simeone receives that ball you can see that there is no way on earth that he will a controlled first touch as it’s heading towards his thigh behind him. So if Cubarsi does not touch him he would not have his nose pointing towards the goal when managing to gain the control of the ball. So should that really be considered as a goal scoring opportunity. If you ask me, I would say no, but I guess we should not involve common sense here.

The aim here is not complain over the outcome of the game but to shed light over the dubious narratives ”experts” have when explaining the situations. You can’t say that common sense should go over rules if it doesn’t apply to every situation.