{"id":4518,"date":"2026-06-20T22:27:55","date_gmt":"2026-06-20T22:27:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/?p=4518"},"modified":"2026-06-20T22:27:55","modified_gmt":"2026-06-20T22:27:55","slug":"world-cup-2026-paraguays-miguel-almiron-sent-off-for-covering-mouth-while-speaking-to-opponent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/?p=4518","title":{"rendered":"World Cup 2026: Paraguay&#8217;s Miguel Almiron sent off for covering mouth while speaking to opponent"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\"><b class=\"ssrcss-1xjjfut-BoldText e5tfeyi3\">Paraguay&#8217;s Miguel Almiron became the first player to be shown a red card for covering his mouth while speaking to an opponent during his side&#8217;s World Cup group match against Turkey in San Francisco.<\/b><\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Almiron, 32, obscured his mouth with his hand while speaking to Turkey&#8217;s Mert Muldur, who immediately informed an official standing next to him.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Following a check by the video assistant referee (VAR), referee Ivan Barton from El Salvador announced to the crowd that he was sending off the former Newcastle United winger.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The incident occurred just before half-time with Paraguay leading 1-0.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Commentating for BBC Radio 5 Live, former Republic of Ireland striker Clinton Morrison said: &#8220;If you know the rules, you shouldn&#8217;t do it. You&#8217;ve got to credit the referee and the VAR for making that decision.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Not everyone would agree with it, but if those are the rules, you&#8217;ve got to stick by the rules.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Without Almiron for more than half of the match, Paraguay held on to beat Turkey 1-0.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">They will qualify for the last 32 if they beat Australia in their final group game on Friday (03:00 BST).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Paraguay&#8217;s Miguel Almiron became the first player to be shown a red card for covering his mouth while speaking to&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4519,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4518"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4518\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}