Spurs fans are still understandably incensed about Matty Cash of Aston Villa’s challenge on Rodrigo Bentancur over the weekend, as it was revealed last night that the Uruguayan midfielder will miss two and a half months due to torn ankle ligaments.
In a reckless tackle that showed no effort to play the ball, Cash clattered Bentancur 30 minutes into Villa’s 2-1 victory over Spurs in north London on Sunday. At the time, Villa was leading. Bentancur, who was starting for the club for the first time in nine months after ACL surgery, was rightfully booked and couldn’t go on.
Spurs fans, players, and the bench were left fuming, and Bentancur thought Cash should have been sent off. By the letter of the current legislation, Cash’s tackle was correct to be given a yellow card because it was cynical rather than dangerous and it stopped a potential Spurs counterattack.
Professional fouls are tackles of this kind that occur on a weekly basis in elite football and are a calculated strategy used by even the most successful and visually appealing teams.
Even though it’s an ugly game, they are a part of it.
Therefore, it is difficult to argue against the announcement that professional football will introduce trials of sin-bins for cynical fouls and dissent, possibly in the FA Cup or Women’s Super League.
At a meeting in London on Tuesday, the International FA Board (IFAB), which is in charge of enacting football laws, decided to start “high professional football” trials. These trials will involve players being suspended for ten minutes for tactical fouls or misbehaving toward the referee.
This is good news that could improve the situation.
For a long time, it has seemed that a tactical foul only warrants a yellow card, but a sending-off would be excessively harsh. Attacks similar to Cash’s belong in the gray area.
Top-tier matches should be considerably more fluid thanks to sin-bins that discourage professional fouls.
Take Manchester City, for instance. Although they are not the only team, Pep Guardiola’s group excels at distributing tactical fouls throughout the squad.
In most games, City outnumber their opponents and are so dominant in possession that they may only give up three or four decent counterattack openings.
The danger of having three or four players on a yellow card is insignificant compared to the reward of stopping the opposition’s most promising attacks if City can thwart each attack with a tactical foul.
Players and teams would have a strong deterrent from professional fouls with the possible introduction of sin-bins, which have proven effective in youth and grassroots football. This should make elite matches more thrilling and fluid.
Tackles such as the one made by Cash on Bentancur or the cynical shirt-pull by Italy’s Giorgio Chiellini on England winger Bukayo Saka in the Euro 2020 final would naturally decline and be reserved for the most dire situations.
Referees would also benefit from sin bins for dissension; however, since there is no real benefit to challenging an official, a booking should probably be sufficient. Nevertheless, anything that helps the troubled officials feels good, and plans are also in place to implement rugby’s encouraging and straightforward rule that only the captain may approach the referee.
The conversations from yesterday regarding adding free kicks, penalties, and second yellow cards to the VAR’s scope were more worrisome, though.
It is simply mind-boggling how anyone could view the way VAR is currently used in the Premier League and elsewhere and conclude, “We need more of that!” This furthers the impression that those who set the rules are utterly disconnected from the people who actually watch, play, and engage in the sport.
While it’s encouraging that IFAB has at least promised not to implement any new rules that will make the game even slower, it’s important to keep in mind that during the 2016 VAR trial phase, FIFA predicted that checks would take six seconds and would only be required once every four or five games.
Unlike how it is used today, when it adds another degree of subjectivity and human error to already contentious decisions, the technology was designed for clear and obvious errors.
Despite the promises made by lawmakers, any talk of expanding the capabilities and reach of the technology should be viewed with the utmost skepticism because the path to the current VAR nightmare was paved with good intentions.
