Hugo Ekitike’s red card on Tuesday against Southampton, earned as it was via two very unfortunate and avoidable conduct yellows related to first volleying the ball away after not getting a call and then taking off his shirt in celebration, was unfortunate.
Liverpool manager Arne Slot, though, said the player hasn’t been fined or disciplined and he doesn’t think that would be suitable for a clear mistake. A moment of over-exuberance and an unintended consequence. That it’s best to move on; water under the bridge.
“If disciplined means I spoke to him then yes, but I don’t think that is disciplined,” Slot noted. “Disciplined to me means a fine, and that he didn’t get. It wasn’t smart what he did, what he recognised himself immediately straight away said sorry to his teammates.
“He’s young. Players of all ages will make mistakes and that’s what he did in the situation. But we all make mistakes and you’re allowed to at this club to make a mistake without immediately getting fined or these kind of things and he’s a fantastic human being.
“Even maybe if he wasn’t a person like this he is able to make a mistake. But it wasn’t smart. It didn’t hurt us Tuesday but it might hurt us a bit more tomorrow. The positive thing is Federico Chiesa is showing himself at the moment, so it’s also a chance for him now.”
Giving the referee no choice by taking off your shirt to celebrate when you’re already on a yellow—and when that first yellow was itself nearly as avoidable—was, to put it mildly, unwise. With Liverpool winning the match, it’s also easy to look back and say it was funny.
It was the epitome of a moment of madness. A young player caught up in celebration mode forgetting where he was. Perhaps the most troubling part of it, if there was a troubling part to it, was that the goal Ekitike scored didn’t have a lot to do with Ekitike.
As Slot and many other identified after the match, all the hard work for it had been done by Federico Chiesa—and then Ekitike wheeled off and got himself a second yellow. Still, it’s hardly the end of the world and we can now all laugh and hopefully move on from it.
And Chiesa might even get a few more minutes out of it all, though the expectation is that the resurgent Italian winger will likely start Saturday on the bench and perhaps be used to spell Alexander Isak with the club’s other striker not quite ready to play a full 90 yet.
“I still feel 90 might be too much,” Slot said. “Also for the long term, maybe it is stupid to bring him to 90 and you brought him over the line. So I don’t think it’s smart to play him 90 yet, but normally after two or three weeks in pre-season players go 60, 70 minutes.”