Video: South Korea's Kim Min-hyeok stamps on local Japanese player in the J-League

Was Kim Min-hyeok‘s stamp intentional?

We are only four games into the new J-League season in Japan and we already have our first controversy. During a game between Sagan Tosu and Kashima Antlers recently, Antlers’s Mu Kanazaki was allegedly stamped brutally on his face by Sagan’s South Korean defender Kim Min Hyeok.

Shockingly, Hyeok was awarded just a yellow card by the referee and carried on playing and the video of the incident has since gone viral on the Internet.

The decision by the official to hand Hyeok with just a yellow card has expectedly not gone down too well with the local Japanese fans with some of them asking for, not only the expulsion of Hyeok, but also a total ban on South Korean footballers from the J-League.

It is still not clear as to whether the stamp was intentional or not, but there is also suspicion that the uproar by the Japanese fans has something to do with the fact that the incident has a player from South Korea at the centre-of-it-all, rather than the gruesome incident itself.

Despite that controversy, the Antlers had the last laugh in the end, winning the fixture 3-1 with Kanzaki featuring in the scoresheet as well. Here’s a video of that stamp: