Ronald Araujo emerged unscathed from Wembley and that, in England, seems to be not understood. The Barcelona centre-back played the whole friendly against Uruguay (1-1) despite an incident in the 50th minute that angered the stadium, commentators and the home bench. He went all out for a loose ball, arrived late and found Phil Foden’s ankle with a tackle that sent shivers down the spine. “That’s to break his leg!” was heard on ITV. Foden writhed on the turf while Thomas Tuchel lost his temper on the touchline, pointing his head towards the Uruguayan bench. The referee, Sven Jablonski, blew for a foul. Not even a yellow card.
The reaction was immediate and unanimous. “It almost ended very badly for Phil. Araujo is totally out of control,” said Ian Wright. Harry Maguire went further: “You can’t see a tackle like that and not get a red card. A couple of months away from the World Cup and we have referees allowing tackles like that… It’s disappointing.” Paul Robinson, on BBC Radio 5 Live, made the same point: “The more you see that tackle, the worse it looks. He came in very, very late. He ran him over.” Foden was able to continue, but Tuchel changed him five minutes later. He did not want to tempt fate.
The controversy grew with VAR. In England, they do not understand why it did not intervene to review Araujo’s action and yet did so in stoppage time to award a penalty that allowed Fede Valverde to equalize. “What is VAR for? Araujo could have broken Foden’s leg,” said Emma Hayes. There was also trouble with the yellow cards for Uruguay – only two in the whole match – and the confusion with Manuel Ugarte. Meanwhile, Araujo spoke to the media without going into the incident and left another headline: “It’s a good message. We competed and we were able to find the equalizer at the end. We even almost won the game”. Wembley was still pondering the same image.
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