Suspension and Fines Handed Out From KC's Game in Dallas

Today, the MLS Disciplinary Committee came down with two announcements regarding this past weekend's game between Sporting KC and FC Dallas. Sporting KC's fitness coach Mateus Manoel was suspended for one game and giving a fine for entering the field of play and kicking the ball.

That sounds a lot worse than it actually is. In the 64th minute, a shot by Kansas City went wide of the goal and out of bounds. It bounced off the sign boards and rolled towards the corner flag, eventually rolling back into play. Manoel, who was in the corner working with KC's bench players, jogged quickly onto the field and kicked the ball back to Chris Seitz. While it seems innocent enough, it's something that the league is looking to cut down on this year apparently, as Dallas' fitness coach was hit with the same suspension and fine after the first week of games. Manoel will now miss this weekend's game against the Portland Timbers.



The other incident involved FC Dallas substitute, Kyle Bekker as he was fined for violating the league's policy about hands to the face.. In the 89th minute, Bekker and KC center back, Kevin Ellis tangled in KC's end of the field. A ball was played up the field towards Bekker, but Ellis beat him to the ball with a sliding tackle. As the two game together, Bekker didn't seem to fully try to jump over Ellis. When that happened, Ellis grabbed Bekker's ankle. Bekker took exception to this while Ellis was on the ground, as Ellis tried to get to his feet, still holding Bekker's ankle, Bekker ended up grabbing Ellis by the face and throwing him to the ground.



There was no mention of any of the other incidents in the game mentioned by Simon Borg in his Instant Replay segment on the league's website. But that doesn't necessarily mean that there won't be action, a lot of times the league will get the obvious violation of rules (like entering the field of play and hands to face) early in the week and then get the more debatable stuff later in the week.

As for the referees in the game, PRO does not announce if there are any suspensions for referees, but Jair Maruffo, the center on Saturday, assistant Eric Boria, and the other two referees were given no assignments for this upcoming weekend's games.