Breel Embolo walked off the field in Kansas City with his face buried in his jersey, crying. The Switzerland striker had just been sent off in the World Cup quarterfinal against Argentina, and it wasn’t for a tackle or a shove. It was for something he probably thought he got away with.
Here’s how it went down. The score was tied at 1-1 in the second half. Embolo went down in the box after contact with Argentina’s Leandro Paredes. The referee, Portugal’s Joao Pinheiro, initially pointed to the spot and gave Paredes a yellow card. Penalty to Switzerland. Huge moment.
But then VAR pulled him over to the monitor. And the whole thing flipped.
Replays showed Embolo had embellished the contact, maybe even initiated it and then sold it hard. Under FIFA’s new World Cup rules, VAR can step in for mistaken identity if the wrong player is carded. But here, the review went another direction entirely. Pinheiro determined there was no foul from Paredes. Instead, he decided Embolo had simulated. That yellow for Paredes got wiped. And Embolo got a yellow for diving. His second of the match. Red card.
The aftermath was raw
Embolo didn’t argue much. He just broke down. Teammate Denis Zakaria screamed at the referee, pleading with him to reconsider, before physically guiding Embolo off the pitch before things got uglier. The Switzerland bench looked shell-shocked.
During the hydration break that followed, Granit Xhaka walked straight up to Pinheiro and let him have it. The captain was furious, his team’s shot at a first-ever World Cup semifinal suddenly hanging by a thread.
ITV’s Jobi McAnuff said afterward that the call was technically correct by the book, but called it harsh for a game this big. “He’s waiting for the card, he’s initiated the contact, clearly they’ll see that as simulation. To send him off in a game of this magnitude, it feels harsh.”
Bradley Wright-Phillips was less forgiving. He called it embellishment and said Embolo might have cost his teammates a real chance at history.
Switzerland held on for a while, but playing a man down against Argentina in a knockout game is a brutal ask. The red card shifted everything, and it started with a dive that backfired completely. Embolo will remember this one for a long time. Not for the goal he didn’t score, but for the card he talked the ref into giving him.
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