{"id":748276,"date":"2026-06-20T06:22:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-20T06:22:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/748276\/"},"modified":"2026-06-20T06:22:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-20T06:22:09","slug":"world-cup-2026-paraguays-miguel-almiron-sent-off-for-covering-mouth-while-speaking-to-opponent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/748276\/","title":{"rendered":"World Cup 2026: Paraguay&#8217;s Miguel Almiron sent off for covering mouth while speaking to opponent"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Paraguay&#8217;s Miguel Almiron became the first player to be shown a red card for covering his mouth while speaking to an opponent during his side&#8217;s World Cup group match against Turkey in San Francisco.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Almiron, 32, obscured his mouth with his hand while speaking to Turkey&#8217;s Mert Muldur, who immediately informed an official standing next to him.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Following a check by the video assistant referee (VAR), referee Ivan Barton from El Salvador announced to the crowd that he was sending off the former Newcastle United winger.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The incident occurred just before half-time with Paraguay leading 1-0.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Commentating for BBC Radio 5 Live, former Republic of Ireland striker Clinton Morrison said: &#8220;If you know the rules, you shouldn&#8217;t do it. You&#8217;ve got to credit the referee and the VAR for making that decision.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Not everyone would agree with it, but if those are the rules, you&#8217;ve got to stick by the rules.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Without Almiron for more than half of the match, Paraguay held on to beat Turkey 1-0.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">They will qualify for the last 32 if they beat Australia in their final group game on Friday (03:00 BST).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Paraguay&#8217;s Miguel Almiron became the first player to be shown a red card for covering his mouth while&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":748277,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-748276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/748276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=748276"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/748276\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/748277"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=748276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=748276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=748276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}