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Adding to the discussion on the rules set in soccer, I've always found it bad design that the referee has only yellow and red cards for penalizing individual pl
by karmakurtisaani 3y ago
Adding to the discussion on the rules set in soccer, I've always found it bad design that the referee has only yellow and red cards for penalizing individual players. Especially the red card is a hard penalty, which leads to the referee having too much influence on the outcome, and to counter that, the referees don't like to give out cards too easily.
Now, the consequence of that is for example that players fake injuries constantly, as they can't be reasonably penalized, but the faking might yield a penalty kick or a red card to the other team. However, it makes the game incredibly cringeworthy to watch.
Contrast this to ice hockey, where the minimal penalty is a timeout of 2 minutes. It's enough to put your team in trouble, but you can recover by playing careful defence for 2 minutes. So if a player fakes injuries or otherwise behaves in a minor bad way, the referee can give them a 2 minute penalty - enough to punish, but not enough to skew the rest of the game.
- linhvn 3y agoIf you fake injuries, or fall in the penalty area, you might get a yellow / red card. So no cheaties here, especially with VAR now in place.
- karmakurtisaani 3y agoBut that's my point exactly. Imagine the following situation: you're the referee of the world cup finals, 60 minutes left in the game, a key player of a team clearly fakes an injury and they already have a yellow card from before. What do you do? Let the harmless violation pass and silently approve of faking injuries, or punish the player harshly and potentially decide the result of the game there? With stakes this high, I bet you feel the pressure to let it go. If you say you would give the red card, what if it wasn't an obvious faking of an injury? The problem clearly is that you can't give a slap on the wrist penalty, it's all or nothing.
- linhvn 3y agoYou give the red card. Period. Nowadays, thanks to VAR, the controversial cases can be reviewed on the replay and referees have ample of time to make the call.
- tavorep 3y agoThose who dive can be penalized though. In the Europa League Final just yesterday a player on Roma got a yellow card for simulation trying to get a penalty call. Can the refs do better at catching these? Yes. But to say there's no recourse or it's not penalized is just wrong.
- karmakurtisaani 3y agoSee my reply on the other comment, where I clarify the issue.