Dean Huijsen's Red Cards: 122 Matches Without a Dismissal, 3 Last-Man Fouls at Real Madrid

At the 78th minute of the Madrid derby, the ball cut through Real Madrid's back line like a blade. Dean Huijsen was the last man. There was no malicious tackle, no elbow, nothing violent. Just one step slower than his opponent. Referee Ortiz Arias produced the red card. I sat in front of a screen in Busan, noting the time, the situation, the referee's name, and asking myself whether this was the first time I had witnessed the scene. It was not. It was the third. After fifty years of watching football, I have learned one thing: moments like this do not appear by accident. They repeat. And when a situation repeats often enough, it stops being an accident. It becomes data. Dean Huijsen was born in 2026, part of a generation of centre-backs trained to play with their feet, read the game with their eyes and step up with their head. Before joining Real Madrid, he went 122 consecutive matches without a single dismissal. That number was beautiful enough to become a medal: a young centre-back, nearly one metre ninety-five, neither crude nor clumsy nor impulsive. Then everything changed. Three red cards. Three opponents: Borussia Dortmund, Real Sociedad, Atlético Madrid. Three matches differing in tempo, competition and context, yet sharing one frame: Huijsen fouled as the last defending player. At Real Madrid, every match is examined under a microscope. The Madrid derby that followed pushed everything to a climax: pressure from the stands, from the media, from the dressing room itself. Names such as José Mourinho resurface in every debate about defensive mentality. Thomas Doll, a coach who once worked with young talent, is cited as a reference on teaching defenders how to position themselves. In goal, Thibaut Courtois is the last man who pays the price. Ahead of them, Kylian Mbappé and Vinícius Júnior are the stars the whole team must serve — which means the back line accepts greater risk to keep the attacking structure intact. I have followed Huijsen since his first senior matches. The way he moves is not that of a centre-back who only clears the ball. He wants to carry it, to play through the lines, to push up. That is quality. But quality and positioning are two different stories. The first number is 122. The second is 3. I do not trust figures; I trust the silence between two figures. That silence says Huijsen has not changed in character — he has changed in where he stands on the pitch. The three red cards, structurally, are the same event repeating. Not three accidents, but a pattern. Against Dortmund, Real Sociedad and Atlético Madrid, he fouled in a last-man situation. At Real Madrid the frequency works out to roughly one red card every seventeen matches. For a centre-back expected to anchor a title-contending defence, that rate is unsustainable. Each card is a match his team must play a man down, and in big matches, a man down means dropped points. What stands out is the nature of the fouls. They are not scything tackles, not acts of retaliation. They are late decisions — the mark of a player arriving a beat after the moment, and because he arrives late, no safer option remains. This matters because it redirects the diagnosis. The problem is not mental discipline. The problem is coaching and situational judgement. A contract has a signature, but the dark also carries a signature of its own. In football, that dark side is everything absent from the stat sheet: where a defender stands before the ball arrives, the angle of his run, the distance between centre-back and goalkeeper. The three red cards are only the visible part. The submerged part is dozens of other situations Huijsen handled correctly that nobody remembers. I once built a simulation model covering thirty-eight European clubs, based on contract data, wage correlation and debt indices. That model taught me that risk always hides where nobody looks. With Huijsen, the risk is not his talent. It is the defensive structure around him. Real Madrid operate with a high line. When the midfield does not press early enough, when both full-backs push up to support Mbappé and Vinícius Júnior, the last remaining defender is repeatedly thrown into one-on-one duels with opposing strikers. At twenty years old, inside a system like that, error is not a choice. It is a probability. The official narrative offers two versions. The first blames referee Ortiz Arias. The second blames the immaturity of a young player. Both are convenient, and both miss the most important thing. If this were a discipline problem, the 122-match clean streak would not exist. An impulsive player does not sustain that record across multiple clubs and multiple leagues. The more reasonable explanation is that Huijsen's role has changed. That 122-match run was likely built inside a deep defensive block, where he was rarely the last man, where team-mates were always close. At Real Madrid, that distance disappears. At sixty-six, I no longer chase breaking news; I sit and wait for it to find me. And the news here is not the third red card. The news is that one of Europe's most expensive young centre-backs is being placed inside a system that does not protect him. The transfer market is a play, and I sit in a row the actors do not know about. But on the pitch, no script covers the space behind his back. If the pattern is not corrected, the consequences will arrive in sequence. Suspensions force reshuffles in the back line. Courtois faces more one-on-ones. Real Madrid drop points in exactly the matches that decide seasons. Over the long term, a centre-back's value is tied to one word: available. A player who cannot take the field is not an asset; he is a liability. The question is not whether Huijsen has enough talent. The question is whether Real Madrid will adjust the system to protect him, or keep letting him protect himself in space nobody covers.