Red card for Kevin Muscat's football career

Jan 28, 2011, 0:36 GMT

Sydney - On-field hooligan Kevin Muscat was considering retirement Friday after receiving an eight-week suspension from Football Federation Australia for yet another brutal tackle.

The weekend red card ended Muscat's season early and jeopardized the career of young fellow A League player Adrian Zahra.

The 37-year-old defender has earned 40 yellow and five red cards during his six years at A League club Melbourne Victory.

The latest send-off came after what football fans have described as the worst foul in the six-year history of the A League.

Muscat's two-footed tackle on Melbourne Heart's Zahra ended the 20-year-old's season and might require a knee reconstruction that could keep him out for nine months.

Muscat, who represented the Socceroos 51 times and took the field in more than 500 league games in Australia and Britain, played for Crystal Palace, Wolverhampton Wanderers, Glasgow Rangers and Millwall during his nine years based in Britain.

In 1998, the same year he broke the leg of Norwich City striker Craig Bellamy, Muscat downed Matty Holmes in a tackle that left the Charlton Athletic midfielder with ankle damage that needed four operations to repair.

In 2001, during an international friendly, Muscat seriously injured French World Cup winner Christophe Dugarry.

'I deeply regret the tackle, and I spent much of Saturday night replaying the event,' Muscat said of his physical assault on Zahra and the verbal assault on the referee that provided an equally nasty postscript.

The Zahra tackle, a YouTube hit, has been described as the worst ever football foul.

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