Blue Card: Football should crack down on abuse of referees

It can be argued that blue cards should be used only for dissent.

Soccer’s top rule-making body is backing away from its own plan to amend the laws of the sport to reduce cynical fouls and player misbehaviour toward referees. The International Football Association Board, or IFAB, has decided to postpone the introduction of a new “blue card” as part of trials for temporary dismissals akin to the penalty box in ice hockey and sin-bins in rugby union.

According to ESPN, there will be no announcements “until after the IFAB Annual General Meeting (AGM) on March 2, when all proposed trials and law changes are discussed before being approved for use from June 1.”

IFAB was originally meant to announce the introduction of the new card on Friday. But the plan was leaked on Thursday, setting off howls of protest
from professional players, managers and fans. They argued a blue card, coming on top of the familiar yellow and red, would needlessly complicate the game. “It doesn't sound like a fantastic idea in the first moment,” said Liverpool FC manager Jurgen Klopp. “But ... I can’t remember  the last fantastic idea (which) came from [IFAB], if they ever had one.”

There is also resistance to the introduction of sin-bins, with or without blue cards, with critics arguing that any team left short-handed would simply
pack their defense, slow down the game and resort to other time-wasting tactics while their player sat out.

If the board allows itself to be bullied into dropping the proposals altogether, it will have missed an opportunity to remove a blight on the sport. The brow-beating of referees, especially by players during games but also by managers afterward, is a disfiguring feature of modern professional soccer. (Klopp is himself a practiced exponent of this dark art.)

While match officials have received abuse from the stands since time immemorial, aggression from players and managers has grown considerably in recent decades, as the sport has developed into a multi-billion dollar business. Even as the stakes have grown in professional soccer, the burgeoning wealth and celebrity of players has bred a culture of entitlement and impunity. This has brought more pressure on referees, with players and managers using them as scapegoats for poor performance or defeat.

It doesn’t help that, as in many sports, some of soccer’s rules are subjective, and referees, having to make judgments on the fly, can get it wrong. The introduction of technology, such as the video-assistant referee, or VAR, has increased the drama and suspense for spectators — but has done little to improve players’ behavior toward the referees.

Last November,  just before IFAB announced plans for sin-bin trials, the body responsible for refereeing games in English professional soccer reported that instances of player dissent had more than doubled to 347 from 165  at the same stage of the previous season. Rare is the English Premier League game where the referee isn’t surrounded by irate players screaming into his face in protest over a decision. (The rules allow a yellow card for this kind of verbal abuse, but referees tend to save that punishment for player-on-player physical fouls.)

Arguably worse, the culture of player misbehaviour has trickled — or more appropriately, cascaded — down to the amateur and grassroots levels of soccer. The consequences are predictable: On both sides of the Atlantic,referee numbers have been falling as players, coaches and parents, inspired by what they see on TV, berate and bully officials.

The paucity of referees at lower levels will inevitably trickle upward to become a problem at the professional level. With fewer people willing to take on the job, leagues will struggle to find competent match officials. This will set off a vicious cycle of poor refereeing, greater anger in the stands and more aggression from players and managers — all leading to fewer referees.

To try and end this cycle, soccer authorities have been testing out new rules, such as sin-bins and points deduction for teams, at grassroots levels. Since 2019, 31 grassroots leagues in England have trialed temporary suspension: A player demonstrating egregious dissent is shown a yellow card and removed from the field for 10 minutes. According to the English Football Association, this has led to a 38 percent reduction in dissent. There is nothing to suggest that this has led to a deterioration in the quality — or a slowing down in the pace — of grassroots games.

For instance, I would argue that blue cards should be used only for dissent, as has been the case in grassroots trials; cynical fouls can be dealt with separately by a more stringent application of yellow cards to avoid confusion. And, as with ice hockey, how long a player is confined to the sin-bin should depend on the degree of their infraction.

Certainly, there is much to criticise about IFAB. It makes no sense that the laws of the world’s most popular sport should be written by a small clique dominated by British officials. The board is made up of representatives of the soccer associations of England, Scotland, Northern Island and Wales, each of which has one vote in all decision-making, plus FIFA, which has four. (All decisions must be decided by three-quarters of the votes.)

But, contrary to Liverpool’s Klopp, this is an instance where soccer’s lawmakers have got it right. Here’s hoping they, like the best referees, have the backbone to resist the pressure and stick to their decision.

Bobby Ghosh is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. Views do not represent the stand of this publication.

Credit: Bloomberg