After the calm comes the storm. If the last round of matches produced the lowest number of yellow and red cards of the season, this weekend produced one of the highest with 60 bookings and seven sendings off. A lot of those though came in the local derby between Sevilla and Betis, where referee González Vázquez managed a total of thirteen yellow cards and three reds, and that's not counting the incident he reported when Betis coach Serra Ferrer kicked the match delegate on the ankle at the end. González goes on to comment in his report that the kick caused the delegate to fall, and that Serra had to be taken from the ground by the security forces to prevent him from causing worse trouble, but Sevilla veteran defender Pablo Alfaro described the whole thing as "something out of Benny Hill".

The first red card of the game was for an old villain Javi Navarro, whose mule kick back between the legs of Dani was spotted by the referee. Dani has a reputation of being a bit of a diver, but this time the tears were genuine! Later in the match Maresca followed Navarro down the tunnel after picking up a second booking, and the Betis physical trainer was also sent off for calling the match officials a bunch of idiots.

Another coach was in trouble as well, Osasuna's Javier Aguirre being shown the red card by Lizondo Cortés for telling him "Vicente (apparently referees do have first names!), that was never a foul you son of a whore!" When shown the red card for his comments, the Mexican coach told the official "that's just an expression from my country, you are a racist and you're out to get me!" Aguirre was apparently in a hurry to get away from the ground as he was on his way to pick up an award (probably not for the sweetest spoken manager!), so he got his wish!

The rest of the sendings off were rather tame compared to that, with Cádiz's Oli being shown a straight red for a rash tackle just a quarter of an hour after Valencia's Marchena picked up a second yellow card in the same match, and Mallorca's Doni also getting two bookings against Espanyol. Four players also reached the five yellow card threshold and will miss next weekend's games, including Fleurquín (Cádiz), David García (Espanyol), Matellán (Getafe) and Valcarce (Málaga). (22.11.05)

PS Just for the record, no first division players were sent off in the fourth round cup matches last week. In fact only two red cards were shown in games involving top flight teams, one to Celta's volatile coach Fernado Vázquez for protesting and one to Lleida's Luiz Carlos for a bad tackle on a Getafe player.