What do you think ?

My verdict , it was gameplay and obviously Matuidi was going for the ball with good intentions to get it . It was clumsy miss , but things like that happen in football so often it just happened that this tackle was pretty harsh one . Yellow was a good decision by referee .

I would understand if he got red , but I think yellow was good decision .

Football is going nuts about every regular tackle . It is a contact sport and that is why I like it . Things like this happen .

Compared to this, that is a red card

@SocceeBoss have a great point, if that's a red, this one is 100% red card.

I like Matuidi but that's a red card. It's a contact sport, yes. A dangerous tackle is not part of the conversation. It doesn't matter what his intention was. He severely injured the Nigeria player and should have been sent off as a consequence.
Refs were very lenient to France. Giroud should have been sent off for the elbow too! The Nigeria goal was onside. It was just all rubbish officiating.

red, as in the belgium game.. both deserved reds

That is 100% red card

Marchisio's tackle has more attention than Matuidi the way I see it. If you look at Marchisio's foot you'll notice he was going for the opponent's foot, while you can clearly see Matuidi close to the ball almost touching it without any sign of any sort intention whatsoever. I think the referee made a good decision here.

I agree with knibis. Both reds.

Matuidi could have broken his ankle, even if he wasn't trying to. :/

BOth reds

Both reds. Should have been easy decisions.

That is SO OBVIOUS red, I was kinda shocked not to see him sent off.

Both of them are red cards. Matuidi is one lucky person!

we got lucky there, it should have been a red.

Horror tackle. Straight red. Marchisio's was a yellow for me.

I think Marchisio's was way worst than the orther one, It seems to me the first tackle was harsh but was more like an accident, poor tackling skills. Could go either way, arguable red or yellow.

edit: just noticed gagagoodlife said exactly what I ment...

I agree it may look Orange, but imo its more yellow than red, he is late so even if its a hard tackle it wasnt his intention to hurt...
Anyway happy for the qualificaion :).

Yellow from me.

Actually, and I hope this won't count as going 'off topic', but, watching this tournament has had me wondering if FIFA has told their referees to let more physical tackles go unpunished.

What I mean is: I've seen several games now where the ref has let go things which, frankly, I would have expected a foul/card for in this day and age. England vs Uruguay, for instance, got pretty ugly at points, with hardly any cards shown all game long, as well as others such as Ghana vs USA, USA vs Germany, Netherlands vs Australia, and others.

These were games in which half the stuff which took place would have earned a lot more cards, from previous tournaments, and it occurred to me that perhaps FIFA had made that an actual refereeing direction, following the ridiculous games like Portugal vs Netherlands in 2006, and the various complaints about diving which have been going on for the last few World Cups.

It might be that FIFA were responding to pressure over such things, and instructed their refs to let more go, in the game, to match the higher level of physicality in Northern Europe and Central America etc, where fewer cards are dished out for physical collisions when the intent was clearly not hostile, as opposed to the lighter thresholds of contact in Southern Europe, South America and Italy, etc,

Then again, we have also seen some dodgy penalties given under hardly any contact at all, so, maybe not.

Just something I've been thinking about.

for me they are both reds. if you give a yellow to Matuidi, then Marchisio should have gotten a yellow too.

@Lod
yes Uruguay was perhaps the dirtiest side in this WC. i see what you mean, as i alredy said about the climate, FIFA should make sure that a fair common line of judgment is adopted by the refs at the start of the tournament, and possibly even inform the teams about it, making explicative videos featuring some typical game examples and the relative case-evaluations. it will never happen, i know.

Both red.

Onazi's broken leg says hello to you. no joke, it's Onazi's leg for real: