There are even cases wherein a player would be tasked to hurt the 'star player' of the other team just to get the win; and this exists on every sports related tournaments not only in soccer.
Does this game of deliberately sending a player to hurt a star player still exist? I thought it was an old trend. It is a game of hatred and shouldn't be tolerated. Anyways I don't see that type of trend any more or if they do it such a way that people will not understand.
In those days it used to be obvious. The coach will introduce one irregular player to do the deal and get a red card.
Depends on the type of manager, type of team, and type of player to do that. We all famously know that Ramos had that type of mindset and Mourinho was fine with it, maybe he even encouraged it but I cannot say, but Ramos definitely had that mindset. He would cherish a red card if it meant that he would injure the player on the other side.
He did that to Messi a million times, and he famously did it to Salah on the UCL finals as well. Is there still some players who do it? Well maybe at that level, but if you go lower then you will find a lot of aggressive players, not everyone is mad like gattuso was, but they still do it so it still exists in the football world somewhere.