True but then you have to judge if his actions were unreasonable, and nothing that he does is unreasonable.
He doesn't see him, he looks at the ball, and if you removed the defender out of the video then Rashford's actions look completely natural.
Aye.
But, as the ESPN article posted a few pages back noted, "a player is expected to be aware of where their opponent is and not play in a way that could cause them injury".
If he endangers his opponent partly because he didn't see him, as far as the rules are concerned that's still on Rashford. It's
his responsibility to make sure he knows where his opponent is so that his attempt to shield the ball doesn't end up with his studs impacting on someone's ankle in a way that's deemed dangerous.
Inevitably the rules being drawn that way will lead to players being harsly red carded as a result of bad luck and bad outcomes, as you obviously can't always 100% be aware of your surrounding and in full control. Shit happens, people will commit bad-looking challenges by sheer accident. But I assume the thinking in removing intent was that it's worth those unlucky red cards in order push players to take fewer risks with each others' safety.
I mean it's pretty clear that the game
is less dangerous now than it used to be, so they'd probably say removing intent as a factor has been a success.