Red Card for Love

About this drama

Start with the pitch, because the copy commits to it completely. Two star captains of top-flight men's football, hailing from two mutually hostile, time-honored sworn rival clubs that will never see eye to eye, brawled openly on the pitch and were both shown red cards and sent off. What no one witnessed unfolded in the unmonitored players' tunnel, and this is where the blurb turns up the heat: the fiery, hot-headed striker shoved the sunny, easygoing midfield playmaker hard against the wall for a searing, all-consuming deep kiss. That's the whole contradiction in one image, enemies in front of the cameras, something else in the one corridor without them. The cover story is the second engine. To cope with the unforgiving, highly scrutinized climate of the traditional professional sports industry and the mounting pressure from their brand sponsors, the pair are forced to keep up their public facade of mortal enemies, while behind closed doors, living together during national team training camps, they indulge in what the copy calls a razor-sharp, electrifying push-and-pull dynamic. Rooming together whenever the country calls is the detail that does the most work here, since the rivals share a roof on top of sharing a secret. The blurb's own closing line sells it as a sizzling forbidden underground romance fraught with the perpetual danger of total public ruin. Forty episodes, and the ending isn't given: whether they get exposed, and who breaks first, is unlisted.

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