Lucas Hernández sentenced to 31 days’ community service

Earlier this month, Atlético Madrid defender Lucas Hernández was arrested outside his home near Madrid on suspicion of domestic abuse. As Robbie Dunne wrote a few days after the incident, a prosecutor sought seven months’ jail for Lucas and six months for his girlfriend after the two reached a resolution outside of court. But seeing as the 20-year-old does not have any priors and the requested sentence was for a period of less than two years, it was very unlikely that he would serve jail time.

On Monday, less than a week after standing trial, Lucas and his (now-ex) girlfriend Amelia Lorente were sentenced by the Criminal Court of Madrid to 31 days’ community service each. Furthermore, neither party may contact the other for six months. The two previously reached an agreement on the parameters of a restraining order, but prosecution pushed for jail time due to the seriousness of the crime (full details are here)

This community service sentence should bring to an end a rather regrettable incident for Lucas. There have been no indications from the club or from Diego Simeone that the young Frenchman will be disciplined further; indeed, Lucas was available for selection in Atlético’s 4-2 win at Bayer Leverkusen last Tuesday. The hope is that he will grow and learn from what happened that night. While he is just 20, he needs to know that there is never a reason to put your hands on a woman.