Napoli have announced they will appeal the decision by the Lega Serie A to ban their striker Gonzalo Higuain for four matches after he was sent off in the 3-1 defeat to Udinese last weekend.
Higuain was given an automatic one-game ban for receiving two yellow cards in the match, but an additional three matches -- which will see the league's top scorer with 30 goals in 31 games miss the trip to Roma later this month -- were sanctioned due to the player's behaviour after being shown the red card.
He pushed referee Massimiliano Irrati and had to be restrained by his own teammates and led off the field by Napoli staff, whom he also pushed away as he headed down the tunnel. Coach Maurizio Sarri has also been handed a one-game touchline ban after also being sent to the stands during the Serie A fixture.
"Napoli will make an appeal against the suspension of Gonzalo Higuain and Maurizio Sarri because we feel they are unfair, and in any case excessive," read a succinct statement on the Serie A club's official website.
Parallels have been drawn with an incident which went unpunished in the Turin derby just a few weeks ago, when Juventus defender Leonardo Bonucci appeared to force his head against that of the referee Nicola Rizzoli.
The Juventus and Italy defender was not given any more than the statutory one-game ban for receiving his fifth booking of the season, because Rizzoli did not include the incident in his report of the game. Faced with the comparisons between the two incidents on Tuesday, Rizzoli explained why they were indeed different.
"In that instance, it was I who pushed him away from the additional referee behind the goal," Rizzoli said at an event in Bologna, as quoted by La Repubblica. "Otherwise I wouldn't have just shown him a yellow card.
"Bonucci did not head-butt me. All the player did was go over the top with his protests, but it was never head against head. The pictures don't give a true reflection of what happened. If he had head-butted me, it would not have been just a yellow card.
"There's too much exasperation and too little knowledge about the rules involving everybody in the world of football. We referees admit to our mistakes when we make them so as to help improve the game, and others should start doing the same."
Napoli will be hoping to obtain a reduction in the size of Higuain's ban to permit him to face Roma on April 25, with that fixture potentially decisive in the battle for second place and a berth in the group stage of the Champions League next season. The Azzurri are currently four points ahead of the Giallorossi.