Three red cards and not one of them he can complain about. Gaetano Berardi will now miss the rest of the games this season after receiving his third red card of the season, as confirmed by the FA earlier today. His tackle on Saturday afternoon means we won’t see him in a Leeds shirt until pre-season.
People can lap it up all they want, calling Berardi a “warrior” and a “hero” for making tackle like this but for me he’s neither. In terms of the rest of his passion and commitment I would label him a warrior, he battles hard, wins tackles and puts 100% in. The three red cards he’s received this season have been ridiculous. A head-butt a 0-3 up in Bristol, a lunge at 0-2 down against Cardiff City and now a two-footed scissor tackle against Sunderland. The thing is, there was no need for nay of them and it needs looking at. Obviously we’ve had a discipline issue this season and as a whole it hasn’t been good enough, but for a player to end up with a five game ban through a series of red cards is just unacceptable.
Berardi has always been a hot head, he was sent off at the start of his Leeds United career for a karate kick and it wasn’t long before his next red card. We thought he’d calmed down, just one or two red cards since and then three this season. What’s extremely poor is that between him and Liam Cooper they have five red cards, and have ended up missing nineteen matches, these two are the captains of this side and for me they should never captain the side again based on this. It may seem extreme, but that is a huge number of games for players to be missing for, especially when they are seen as the leaders in the dressing room.
