The World Cup final ended Sunday and then, according to the BBC's headline, there was some "post-final trouble." Trouble. The word your nan uses for a disagreement outside a chip shop. * Here is the "trouble," as described by the BBC's own article, several paragraphs below that headline: Argentina's Nahuel Molina "appeared to punch" Spain's Rodri as he ran past to celebrate. Leandro Paredes went "jabbing Garcia in the throat." Thiago Almada forced Gavi — an unused substitute, a man whose entire final consisted of warming up — to the ground. Assistant coach Roberto Ayala looked to be "holding Garcia around the throat" before appearing to strike Dani Olmo. That's not trouble. That's a police report with a kit sponsor. * To be clear about what the BBC did well: everything. The reporting is superb — a full blow-by-blow, named names, and the lawyerly "appeared to" before every verb, which is exactly what you do before an investigation rules. Alan Shearer, on the BBC's own broadcast, was allowed to be a human about it: Paredes "threw two or three haymakers into someone's face. He went for them." The body of the story knows what it saw. * Only the filing label flinched. "Post-final trouble," "fracas," "altercations" — each noun a size smaller than the footage. Compare The Guardian, which watched the same pitch and headlined Argentina as "final villains" in a "pitiful" ending. One outlet wrote a verdict. The other wrote an incident number. * And tucked inside the BBC's careful prose is the actual scandal the soft headline helps everyone glide past: Paredes was sent off by the referee — and then his red card "was removed from the record shortly afterwards," with FIFA confirming no disciplinary action was taken at the time. A red card, issued in a World Cup final, quietly un-happened. FIFA has now appointed a prosecutor to investigate the thing its own officials un-recorded on the night. That deserves a louder noun than "trouble." * We get the BBC's bind: it's the referee of British media, pre-verdict, allergic to adjectives. But there's a gap between prejudging and euphemizing, and "trouble" lives on the wrong side of it. When a coach has a player by the throat on camera, the headline is allowed to know that too — not just paragraph nine.