Lionel Messi was shown only the second red card of his career as Argentina beat Chile 2-1 in a hot-tempered Copa America third-place play-off.<\/p>\n
The Barcelona forward had provided the assist for Sergio Aguero’s opener before Paulo Dybala made it 2-0.<\/p>\n
But Messi was shown a red following a clash with Gary Medel, which also saw the Chile player dismissed.<\/p>\n
Arturo Vidal scored a second-half penalty but Argentina held off the fightback to secure third place.<\/p>\n
However, the big talking point was undoubtedly the sendings off of Medel and Messi – who has never been sent off for Barcelona, and whose only other red card was on his international debut 14 years ago.<\/p>\n
Tension had been building as the game wore on in a physical encounter with both sides often giving away niggly free-kicks.<\/p>\n
Tempers spilled over eight minutes before half time when Messi appeared to nudge over Medel as they both challenged for the ball.<\/p>\n
Medel responded by forcibly pushing his face into Messi’s as the two players argued before the referee arrived and dismissed them both.<\/p>\n
It seemed harsh on Messi, who in the replays of the incident did not appear to respond aggressively to Medel’s action.<\/p>\n
Chile had also lost Alexis Sanchez to injury early on. The Manchester United forward appeared to suffer a hamstring injury when chasing a long ball over the defence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Lionel Messi was shown only the second red card of his career as Argentina beat Chile 2-1 in a hot-tempered Copa America third-place play-off. The Barcelona forward had provided the assist for Sergio Aguero’s opener before Paulo Dybala made it 2-0. But Messi was shown a red following a clash with Gary Medel, which also […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":65,"featured_media":105409,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,5],"tags":[3831,49773,5795,49774,626,35729,207],"yoast_head":"\n