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You can’t tackle like that.
Regardless of whether you take the ball, or whether you show any malicious intent – if you go into a tackle with your studs up, it’s always possible that the referee will get out the red card.
Branislav Ivanovic knows that, because how many players have we seen dismissed for exactly the same kind of tackle? Actually, a fair few have walked for far less.
This is not about how the game used to be played, and what once upon a time may have warranted a yellow card, these are the guidelines under which the officials now operate in the Premier League – the players have to adapt their tackling technique in accordance.
Forgive the Chelsea fans at Villa Park who were audibly upset by the decision, because they probably wouldn’t have seen the challenge in the same detail as the television audience. Anybody who was watching on ITV though, that was indisputably a red – Kevin Friend rightly saw it as a tackle which could have badly injured Aleksandar Kolarov, and reacted as he would have been instructed to.
ITV did a good job showing the referee’s view of the incident, and that was pretty conclusive – he would be facing more questions had he not dismissed the Serbian.
We have to move past these outdated notions about contact; it’s a different game today – and the potential for injury is now a more important aspect than whether or not the ball was played in the process of the challenge.
Three game ban for Ivanovic, and there’s really no point in Chelsea appealing against that.
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The referee made the correct decision according to the laws of the game as instructed by those in charge. Yet it was the wrong decision for the game itself – a sending off often destroys a game and stops that game being a fair contest (either by giving one team an unfair advantage or by motivating the 10-man team into greater commitment and effort). So why is it that a situation that helps destroy a sport as a spectacle and also very often gives a false result at the end of the game, allowed?
It is to stop players getting injured, I hear the FA and the Premier League shout. So how many players are injured by such sliding tackles, and what proportion of sliding tackles results in an injury? It looks impressively bad, true, but where is the evidence that shows that sliding tackles are significantly worse than other tackles? Significantly worse enough to warrant a red as opposed to a yellow card? How many players have you seen carried off after sliding tackles as compared to any other form of tackle?
Lets see the evidence that informs the decision of the powers that be to wreck a game and potentially distort a season.
I didn’t watch the game after the sending off and have only now seen the final score. I have no interest in lop-sided contests where the referee has decided the game before half-time. Sending the Chelsea player off was a ludicrous decision as there was not even the faintest hint of malicious intent. The game is becoming a joke when such a thing receives anything more than a yellow card. A sending off is the equivalent of a disqualification and nothing Ivanovic did merits such a harsh, game-changing decision. How many more games in the upcoming league will be decided by the referee putting sides at a numeric disadvantage without incontestable cause? Or by not taking action against genuinely dirty players? Thirty? Forty? Makes a mockery of the sport.
So if you show no malicous intent but go onto a tackle with both feet you deserve to be sent off , that is absolute rubbish .How do you tacke without your studs showing ? The officials who govern this game are ruining it for everybody . Why should we sit back and accept a situation just because it has happened before . A player should be sent off only in a situation where it is clear beyond any doubt that his or her intention was to injure the opponent or where it was clear he/ she did not make an honest attempt to get the ball and in my opinion Ivanovich was not guilty in either case although he may have been clumsy and maybe deserved a yellow .