You know that thing that happens every now and then when someone tries to make a tackle in a live televised football match…
They clearly get the ball, but there’s some debate as to whether they’ve made enough contact with the other player first for their actions to warrant a foul. The sort of thing that makes Andy Townsend say something like: ‘He definitely takes the ball, but does he take the man first, Clive?’
Yeah? Well, something a bit like that happened during the hotly-anticipated Confederations Cup game between Chile and Cameroon on Sunday evening.
Indeed, Sebastien Siani did take the ball when challenging Bayer Leverkusen’s Charles Aranguiz. And while it was a tackle from behind and therefore always likely to result in a Chilean free-kick, it’s not completely clear if Siani did actually make contact with Aranguiz at all…
He did manage to make contact with Aranguiz’s shorts, however, as the video below shows.
In something we’ve genuinely never witnessed before, Siani manages to tackle the shorts off his opponent.
Attempting to poke the ball away from Aranguiz, the studs on Siani’s left boot get caught up in the Chilean’s shorts, which end up around his ankles as a result.
Instinctively, the South American takes a tumble, the look on his face suggesting the removal of his shorts has caused some form of injury.
https://twitter.com/gumspoon/status/876507463469719553
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