The Red Card Effect

[PuntsWolf]

Hazard was falling over when a guy went to grab his shirt, missed and touched his hand.

Is that a foul? The guy was then booked and I don't think Hazard would have got the ball anyway.

People will argue he was touched so had the right to fall over. This is the way the game has gone and been allowed to happen. It's gone so far now it's going to be difficult to correct.

 

[Paddingtonwolf]

I think that is a little naive, Frank. Not a bad thing but expecting people to want to win "in the right way" when the rewards are so massive is a bit like believing in unicorns and santa.

 

[Sniffer]

If players did not dive then the problem would not be there.

What is incorrect with this comment? Players are making the referees job harder. Fuck knows why some on here go for Franks throat in an aggressive manner.

 

[Paddingtonwolf]

What is incorrect with this comment? Players are making the referees job harder. Fuck knows why some on here go for Franks throat in an aggressive manner.

I wasnt aware I had.

 

[Del Woppio]

What is incorrect with this comment? Players are making the referees job harder. Fuck knows why some on here go for Franks throat in an aggressive manner.

Because it's romantic to the point of delusion.

We all want diving to stop, but that won't happen because of righteousness. It will happen once it stops being worth doing.

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

To those blaming the referees and the FA for the current problems in football, may I suggest watching the actions of the players in tonight's champions league game at Stamford Bridge. That is where the problem is in football, not the odd mistakes by match officials.

It's not an either/or question though.

Does player behaviour have to improve, absolutely. The authorities have an obvious and key role here in making sure that offenders are properly punished so that there is a proper deterrent to trying to con the officials. Clubs should stop looking after their own as well, so rather than the laughable quotes from Deeney regarding Forestieri for example, his club captain and manager roundly condemn him and make sure he is under no illusions that such behaviour is unacceptable and repeat offences will result in his services no longer being required.

However that does not give the referees immunity when they make mistakes and it is more than the "odd mistake", standards are lower than I have ever seen at any point in the last 25+ years and putting all the blame back onto the players smacks of officials sticking their head in the sand and refusing to believe they have a problem of their own.

 

[Dinowolf]

Sniffer don't make it personal. This has been a good debate and people are giving their opinions, not going for someone's throat.

'If players did not dive then the problem would not be there'. It depends which problem you're talking about, diving players or a refereeing system that allows the divers to get away with it unpunished for the most part.
Yes, if players didn't cheat then refs jobs would be easier, but because some players do cheat then refs need to deal with it adequately on the field of play, and the system should allow that to happen.
Its like saying that if players didn't foul there would be no need for free kicks. We know that's true but it is hardly likely.

 

[Sniffer]

So should the referees be brandishing more cards for suspected diving/cheating on the basis that players may think twice about doing it? if the authorities don't/won't act then what should they do.

 

[Paddingtonwolf]

So should the referees be brandishing more cards for suspected diving/cheating on the basis that players may think twice about doing it? if the authorities don't/won't act then what should they do.

Frankly, yes that is EXACTLY what they should do. It will take balls of steel to do it though, and from that point of view I understand the issue for referees.

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

So should the referees be brandishing more cards for suspected diving/cheating on the basis that players may think twice about doing it? if the authorities don't/won't act then what should they do.

They should have a much keener eye for what is a foul and what is a dive for a start.

Personally I think that is an area where video evidence after the game might come into play more, I am more concerned with the basic error rate of referees, often for pretty straightforward decisions, which is far too high. They make too many mistakes, many have them have little feel for the game, they ruin a good portion of games with horrific decisions, their control of the players is akin to a low quality supply teacher a lot of the time and they refuse to accept that this could conceivably be possibly maybe their fault as well.

If the rate of unprosecuted crime in a city rockets by 500%, is this:

a) The population's fault for being such rotters and brazenly breaking the law all the time
b) The police's fault for failing to do their job in either detecting the crimes or making cases stick
c) Both a) and b)

 

[Sniffer]

.....and more mistakes to begin with. It's the same as the holding of players at corners. They will be lambasted by the usual managerial suspects/pundits each time they get it wrong though.

What will be hard for the refs though is to not descriminate against known divers. They have to be brave enough to judge each incident on its own merits rather than the bollocks we got from one ref against Chelsea who stated that Frank
Lampards a good bloke and wouldn't have meant his knee high challenge (was it against Adam Hamill?).

 

[Alan]

He has allowed the diving to happen. Should have grabbed control of the game early doors and didn't.

Totally disagree. Just look at the Orlando v. New York City match last Sunday/Saturday/whenever it was. An early card was handed out for diving and that did nothing to stop the issue. Neither did the second card issued for diving. Or the third. All against the same team!

 

[Del Woppio]

It's different in the professional game though, Alan.

nibble...

 

[Alan]

*sigh*

 

[MARKakaJIM]

Totally disagree. Just look at the Orlando v. New York City match last Sunday/Saturday/whenever it was. An early card was handed out for diving and that did nothing to stop the issue. Neither did the second card issued for diving. Or the third. All against the same team!

You'd need to sustain the approach for more than 90 minutes to see any sort of results though, I mean 1 booking in isolation is nothing really is it? I'm sure if one of those Orlando players had picked up another booking and ended up walking before the end of the game then they'd be looking at their stupid diving a lot more but 1 yellow card does't really count for shit in the grand scheme of things. Perhaps if they carry on with that in the next 3-4 games and find themselves on the verge of a suspension solely, or at least mainly, down to stupid dives that gain nothing then their manager will start to get on their back about it.

That referee tonight just had no control, the red card for Ibrahimovic was a joke, as soon as he went for the tackle he realised he wasn't getting there and did everything he could to avoid it, he wasn't even leading with his feet by the time contact came but the referee was already storming over with the red card in hand. Perhaps from that point the referee decided he needed to ease off a bit realising he'd gone in too heavy handed on that incident but with characters like Luiz and Costa on the field you can't afford to do that, they're always going to be a handful for referees, especially when they've got a sparring partner like each other for 90 minutes. The referee needed to keep a very close eye on them, not to mention the likes of Verratti and Silva too who are no angels, and make sure they knew who was boss but he didn't he let them get away with murder, almost left them to govern themselves for the most part.

 

[Alan]

So what's he supposed to do? Issue yellows for everything? The game would have ended 7v7. I don't believe for a second that those players would have given the ref a moment's peace tonight.

He obviously had a poor game on the whole but he's not slouch. He's reffed UCL Final's, after all.

 

[MARKakaJIM]

You keep a closer eye on the main protagonists for a start, Costa and Luiz, you certainly don't turn your back on one of them a few seconds after you've turned down his appeal for a foul so he can push someone over in a tantrum leaving you none the wiser. If he'd clamped down on those two early doors then you'd almost certainly have at least one of them seeing red, quite possibly before half time had come around, but most of the players out there would've been sensible enough to see that the referee wasn't one for taking shit and fell in line accordingly. As it was the usual suspects got away with their shenanigans and then as the game wore on more and more people descended to their level and the whole game was completely out of hand, by that point all a red card would've done is probably sparked a pitch wide brawl as so many tempers had frayed.

I think the early, and incorrect, sending off of Ibrahimovic stopped any chance of that clamp down happening though, I think the referee soon realised he'd made the wrong call there and so went too far the other way in trying to correct things.

 

[Haggstone]

I think another cause of the issue that has already been hinted at is that most refs I see don't necessarily have a good understanding of the game itself, I would imagine ex players would make for the best refs as they would command more respect and be aware of all the tricks that the players get up to. Don't exactly see ex players queuing up to become a referee though, probably too much of a stigma attached to it. Can't really see that ever changing either.

 

[Johnny75]

I think another cause of the issue that has already been hinted at is that most refs I see don't necessarily have a good understanding of the game itself, I would imagine ex players would make for the best refs as they would command more respect and be aware of all the tricks that the players get up to. Don't exactly see ex players queuing up to become a referee though, probably too much of a stigma attached to it. Can't really see that ever changing either.

This argument gets brought up too often for me and is nonsense really. Refereeing a game is a completely different skill as management is a completely different skill. The best players invariably turn out to be terrible managers.

Yes, referees need to know the game better and ex-players could certainly provide education for the RA and I'm sure they do and if they don't then it should be. Simple human mechanics and mental training could eliminate a lot of mistakes from a referee's game, much the same as YW will have a better knowledge of coaching than many ex-players because he is educating himself to do so.

For some reason the RA and FA are at odds to do this properly and I imagine FIFA is also to blame in this as strength comes from the top. Making referees professional should have come with the higher education courses but alas this is not the case.

 

[Tony Towner]

Make diving a sending off offence, with a panel of experts, 2 former players and 2 ex referees to review all Premier League games on a Tuesday morning. (Not enough cameras lower down). They can ratify those given and also review those that weren't. Then an automatic 3 game ban for those that are found to dive. It would cut it down significantly within a month in my view.

However there is this grey area which has appeared in the last dozen years where you hear pundits say "he is entitled to go down for that", by definition that is a dive as they are saying normal contact wouldn't have brought him down, but because they have been touched hitting the deck is seen as acceptable. There would need to be clarity on whether this is to be tolerated or not. At the moment players are lambasted for not going down in such circumstances, Shearer and Gullit, both got stuck into Sam Vokes on MOTD last week for not going down when his shirt was tugged and ridiculed him when he said "I'm not that type of player".

My final point is we aren't whiter than white, Dicko has been booked twice this year for trying to con a penalty in the box.