{"id":771556,"date":"2026-07-01T06:49:13","date_gmt":"2026-07-01T06:49:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/771556\/"},"modified":"2026-07-01T06:49:13","modified_gmt":"2026-07-01T06:49:13","slug":"world-cup-2026-ecuadors-piero-hincapie-sent-off-for-covering-mouth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/771556\/","title":{"rendered":"World Cup 2026: Ecuador’s Piero Hincapie sent off for covering mouth"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week, England midfielder Jude Bellingham was not sent off despite covering his mouth while speaking to Ghana’s Jordan Ayew.<\/p>\n

Before the tournament, Fifa’s head of referees Pierluigi Collina explained players were permitted to hide their mouth if engaging in “friendly conversations”.<\/p>\n

He said the new law was designed for “confrontational” interactions.<\/p>\n

The decision to implement this new rule<\/a> was taken during a special meeting of the law-making International Football Association Board (Ifab) in Vancouver in April.<\/p>\n

Fifa president Gianni Infantino had previously spoken<\/a> in support of such a punishment being rolled out, saying referees should work from a “presumption” that players have said “something they shouldn’t have”.<\/p>\n

The issue of players covering their mouths came under the spotlight in February when Benfica winger Gianluca Prestianni raised his shirt while speaking to Real Madrid’s Vinicius Jr during a Champions League game.<\/p>\n

The Argentina international was accused of racist abuse – which he denied – and provisionally banned for one match. Following a Uefa investigation, Prestianni was instead found guilty of homophobic conduct<\/a> and banned for six matches – three of which were suspended.<\/p>\n

Any decision to send a player off remains at the discretion of the referee, who will consider all circumstances before issuing a red card.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last week, England midfielder Jude Bellingham was not sent off despite covering his mouth while speaking to Ghana’s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":771557,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":["post-771556","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/771556","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=771556"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/771556\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/771557"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=771556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=771556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=771556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}