Enzo Fernandez has not been charged. He has not even been booked. But the former head of English refereeing has delivered the verdict Manchester City supporters were braced for.
Keith Hackett, the ex-PGMOL chief and former FIFA referee, reviewed the footage of the Argentine’s contact with Sven Jablonski at the Etihad on Wednesday and reached a blunt conclusion.
“This is a deliberate push. With a degree of force. Should have seen red,” Hackett wrote on X, in a verdict first picked up by GiveMeSport.
The 74th minute at the Etihad
City were trailing 4-1 when the ball spun loose towards Fernandez on the edge of the Paris Saint-Germain box. He shaped to shoot and found Jablonski planted directly in his line. The £125m midfielder placed both hands on the official’s back and shoved him to the turf, as replays showed. Jablonski picked himself up, waved play on and did not reach for his pocket.
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Erling Haaland pulled a goal back a minute later for his second of the night, per the ESPN match log, but a short-handed comeback never arrived. Désiré Doué, Ousmane Dembélé and Vitinha had put PSG three up by half-time before Maghnes Akliouche added a fourth in the 62nd minute.
The incident went unnoticed in real time. The footage did not.
Retrospective action is the long shot
UEFA’s disciplinary body rarely overturns the on-field view once a referee has had a clear chance to issue a card and chosen not to. Jablonski waving play on reads as a decision that the contact was accidental, and that reading tends to settle such cases.
Hackett sees it differently. A deliberate push on a match official is one of the clearest red-card offences in the book, and a former senior refereeing voice saying so publicly puts fresh weight on an incident the on-field team let pass.
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Fernandez’s bruising opening month in sky blue
Fernandez only arrived at the Etihad in September, after Manchester City paid the joint-British-record £125m fee that took him out of Chelsea on deadline day, Sky Sports reported. The 25-year-old had been one of the Blues’ most-used midfielders and a title-winning fixture before the move.
Wednesday was his first European night as a City player. The Etihad was already a tense venue after the Premier League’s September confirmation that an independent commission had found the club guilty of 114 of the 115 financial charges brought in 2023. The club has said it will appeal.
City return to Champions League action away to RB Leipzig on 4 November. There is nothing on the record so far to suggest Fernandez will miss it.
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