Honestly, I thought the first one deserved a yellow, and the second one was cleaner. But one yellow between the two of them seems right.
well, it's not a sequence or action which is a mandatory card. So then it becomes a ref's preference for how to best manage the situation.
A few reasons you wouldn't give a card:
- it's early in the match, and the play of the two teams was not of a nature characterized by a lot of nasty fouls which needed to be controlled
- Panama was being penalized enough, so to speak, with the awarding of the PK
- because the PK was awarded due to VAR and not as a result of an observation by the ref in real time, it's a little easier to manage the situation by not issuing the yellow
While the above reasons are valid and part of match management, as
@Erial_Lion pointed out, the 1st foul was pretty blatant and easy to call, and also more worthy of a yellow card. The 2nd foul for which a PK was also awarded was kind of soft or iffy, and not nearly as worthy of a card.
Another thing that refs try to keep in mind is the number of the player that commit fouls. I believe that both fouls were called on the same Panama player (20, or 22??). If a player has committed too many similar fouls, a ref will issue a card after the 2nd or 3rd incident to indicate that their repeated violations need to stop. When the card is issued after the weakest of the repeated fouls, the optics don't look great, and the player, captain, or coach will often complain that the play didn't warrant a card, but the ref simply explains that the card is for repeated infractions -- something that the fans don't hear.