A Son of the Rock

The sending off of Gareth Bale in Tottenham Hotspur’s match on Sunday reminded me of something I’d idly thought of a while ago.

Once the ref had given the foul he had no alternative but to send Bale off. It doesn’t matter if Bale intended to foul or not, only that he did. And whether or not Bale was last man is irrelevant. The offence is preventing a goal scoring opportunity.

Now, given that a goal was scored from the resulting penalty, in what sense was the scoring opportunity prevented? Spurs were penalised twice for the same offence, once by the sending off and then again by the goal. Surely once is enough.

The fans of both sides were also penalised in that they were denied watching a match between two teams of eleven men each. Sometimes this spoils the game.

Clearly some disadvantage should accrue to the defending team in this sort of situation, and the penalty is not enough – after all, penalties can be saved or missed.

Neither, in these latter cases, would a yellow card fit the bill. If the penalty is saved or missed the defending team effectively get off with the offence.

My solution?

For incidents like this which occur in the penalty area an orange card should be shown to the offender.

If the goal is scored – directly, or in the passage of play immediately following the penalty kick – this is converted to a yellow. The defending side is punished by the loss of a goal and the player concerned, by a yellow card.

If the penalty is saved or missed and no goal follows from this, the orange card becomes a red, to be effective from the next natural stoppage in play. The defending side is punished by the red card and the attackers rewarded by having fewer opponents in play for the rest of the game.

(There may be strange circumstances in which the defender concerned then manages to score in the interval between the penalty miss and the red card becoming effective but this is highly unlikely.)

None of this would prevent the ref from awarding a red card for serious foul play, as at present.

Now orange is probably not the best colour for this card – too easy to be confused with red or yellow. Perhaps blue would be more sensible.*

Over to you, Mr Blatter.

*I’ve just realised that in certain quarters I may be misconstrued because I mentioned only orange and blue. Just to be clear, I hadn’t thought a green card appropriate because of the colour blindness problem and also that it’s something to do with being able to get a job in the US if you’re an immigrant. Maybe a white card then, or purple. Oh, choose your own colour.