Filipe Luis punishment reduced after Messi horror tackle
Atletico Madrid have successfully appealed against Filipe Luis' three match ban for a knee-high lunge on Lionel Messi, getting his sanction reduced to one game.
The Brazilian was sent off when the title challengers met at Camp Nou last weekend, with Barcelona winning 2-1.
Filipe Luis will now miss the clash with Eibar at the Vicente Calderon, but not the matches after that.
Yesterday sporting director Jose Luis Perez Caminero released a statement reading: "Similar actions should be judged equally and have the same punishment. It can not be that an identical action that is written in the referee's report can be punished with one game in one case and then ours is punishable by three games for Filipe."
He added: "Filipe Luis is a player with excellent records, as opposed to a violent player, an athlete. He went to the dispute of a 50-50 ball, touched the ball then later hit the opponent without being able to stop.
"Everyone who has played football knows that there is no misconduct here and this not be judged differently. Three games should serve to punish other actions, not this."
