Rafael Leão is one of the most exciting forwards in European football right now, so naturally he decided to spend part of Portugal's 2-0 win over Chile getting himself sent off for punching an opponent. As warm-up performances go, that's not exactly what the doctor ordered.
Portugal were comfortable enough on the day, picking up a clean sheet win that will have pleased Roberto Martínez on the whole, but Leão's dismissal is the kind of thing that overshadows everything else. It doesn't matter that the team won or that other players may have performed well — when someone throws a punch, that becomes the story, and rightly so.
Now, in fairness to Leão, these pre-tournament friendlies can get a bit niggly. Players are winding each other up, tackles are flying in, and sometimes tempers get frayed in games that technically don't mean anything but feel like they do when your spot in the squad might be on the line. None of that excuses throwing a punch, of course, but it does explain the environment a little bit.
What makes this more frustrating from a Portugal perspective is that Leão is the sort of player they genuinely need at his best. He offers something different — pace, directness, unpredictability. Cristiano Ronaldo is still very much the main man in that squad, but having Leão firing on all cylinders alongside him gives Portugal a real threat. Wasting energy on getting sent off in a friendly is just unnecessary drama nobody asked for.
He'll almost certainly be available for the tournament itself, so this won't cost Portugal in the long run. But it does put a question mark over his discipline, and managers at international tournaments always have that in the back of their minds when picking their starting eleven under pressure.
Leão is too good a player to be making headlines for the wrong reasons. Hopefully he gets this out of his system, keeps his head down, and lets his football do the talking when it actually matters. Portugal fans will be hoping so anyway.
Let me know your thoughts.