by The Disciplinary Council (CD) of the Portuguese Football Federation (FPF) yesterday issued a five-point statement in which it mentions some changes in the way it operates, especially in terms of defense and its deadlines, in order to avoid a new case Paulinho – the striker of Sporting, remember he was given a three game suspension for being sent off in the League Cup final (one for the red card and two for calling the refereeing team corrupt) but ended up filing an injunction with the Court of Arbitration for Sport which, failing to hear the case before the derby, he sent it to the Southern Court Administrative Center (TCAS), which accepted the argument of the striker who argued that the defense deadline, which is why the player qualified for the game last Sunday.
However, in view of Paulinho’s claims, and in order to avoid a repeat, the FPF CD will adopt a new course of action in relation to summary procedures, even though this may cost more time-consuming decisions, making it impossible even in the last instance for players to use if there is not enough time to analyze resources.
From now on, all players who have been penalized (even with a straight red or double yellow card) will be notified to make their defense within 24 hours. But the 24 hours, which were previously counted from the time and day on which the club and the player were notified by the CD, after the TCAS decision, only start to count on the next business day. For example, if a player is notified of an outage at 9:00 AM. of Monday, the defense deadline does not end at 9:00 a.m. on Tuesday, as understood by CD. Now, and after TCAS accepted the argument presented by Paulinho, that the working day starts counting from midnight on Tuesday and lasts until midnight on Wednesday (and if, for example, Tuesday is a holiday, the defense period will be extended until midnight on Thursdays… Same goes for Saturdays and Sundays, by the way).
This new understanding of the defense deadline will of course have implications for future appeals presented to the CD Plenary, which will be able to make decisions later, with the possibility that it will not have time to analyze them in time for the next game. .
Basically, from now on, to prevent anyone from claiming that they were not entitled to the principle of rivalry, as happened with Paulinho, CD will notify all targets, even in those more normal situations, say, as a double yellow card or even a straight red card, who now have one working day to present their defence.
Curiously, and regarding the CD, according to information gathered by A BOLA, this body should have met 25 times (with the corresponding punishment maps), in relation to the 19 league matches, plus the 6 rounds in League Cup, but his figures sat on the table 61 times (36 more meetings than the Disciplinary Regulations require).
