MLS Disciplinary Committee Adds Game to Yoshimar Yotún’s Suspension

Orlando City is practically funding Don Garber’s retirement at this point as the club has received yet another slew of fines in the wake of a stoppage time confrontation with the New England Revolution last weekend. That confrontation saw Yoshimar Yotún sent off and today the MLS Disciplinary Committee added a second game to Yoshi’s suspension.

The Lions and Head Coach James O’Connor got undisclosed fines for violating the league’s mass confrontation policy for the third time in 2018. Yotún was also issued an undisclosed fine.

Yoshi’s suspension now extends past Sunday’s match at D.C. United and will include the home match against…wait for it…Atlanta United on Aug. 24. Here’s a video of what Yotún has been suspended for.

Yotún clearly extends his arm towards approaching New England defender Jalil Anibaba and shoves him away. This was deemed violent enough to warrant a second match for Yotún and it was a silly thing to do. Whether a second game was warranted is debatable but the fact that the second game is against Atlanta United is significant when you consider that DisCo took no action for a blatant headbutt by golden boot leader Josef Martinez against the Seattle Sounders a few weeks ago. Martinez scored a hat trick and two braces in the three games since. Arthur Blank is clearly living right.

The late confrontation in the New England match began with a foul by Dom Dwyer following Orlando City’s tying goal in a 3-3 draw. After the foul, Revolution players swarmed the Orlando striker, leading to the Lions rallying to Dwyer’s defense.

Although there’s no excusing Yotún’s actions that led to the red card, the Peruvian international and his teammates were hacked all night and clearly were frustrated by the combination of numerous fouls — many called, some not — by Revs’ defenders who knocked Sacha Kljestan out of the match with an injury (he has not trained all week as a result). O’Connor also said after the match that Yotún was a serious question mark to even play in the second half due to a foot injury from the repeated shots he was taking as the Revs tried to slow Orlando’s attack.

The Revolution were called for 23 fouls by referee Hilario Grajeda but only received one yellow card — to Brandon Bye for the awful challenge from behind that knocked Kljestan out of the game. Orlando City received four yellow cards and a straight red on 11 total fouls.

It’s a shame the league doesn’t disclose the amounts of the fines. It would be interesting to tally it all up to see how much the league has collected this season from Flavio Augusto da Silva’s team.