Cristiano Ronaldo has been cleared to play in the opening matches of Portugal’s World Cup campaign after he was handed a suspended sentence for his red card against the Republic of Ireland.
The forward, who was a guest of president Donald Trump in the White House last week, had a customary three-match ban for violent conduct commuted by Fifa’s disciplinary committee on Tuesday to a one-game ban, with two further matches suspended under a year’s probation.
In effect Ronaldo has served his suspension, having sat out Portugal’s final World Cup qualifying match against Armenia last week.
Ronaldo, 40, was dismissed during Portugal’s shock defeat by the Republic of Ireland on 13 November, after he was adjudged to have struck the defender Dara O’Shea with an elbow. He had previously been sent off 13 times but never in a senior international fixture, a record that ran through an astonishing 226 matches.
Fifa’s disciplinary code determines that a player should serve “at least three matches or an appropriate period of time for assault, including elbowing, punching, kicking, biting, spitting or hitting an opponent or a person other than a match official”. Under Article 27 of the code, however, the Fifa judicial committee which decides upon disciplinary sanctions has the option to “fully or partially suspend the implementation of a disciplinary measure”.
A Fifa statement said: “In line with article 27 of the Fifa Disciplinary Code, the serving of the two remaining matches has been suspended under a one-year probation period. If Cristiano Ronaldo commits another infringement of a similar nature and gravity during the probationary period, the suspension set out in the disciplinary decision shall be deemed automatically revoked and the remaining two matches must be served immediately at the next official match(es) of the Portuguese representative team. This is without prejudice to any additional sanctions imposed for the new infringement.”
The three-match suspension is subject to appeal to the Fifa appeal committee.
