Esther, a youth level referee, asks:
Last week I was center Ref for a U12BR game. A Red player was dribbling along near the center circle. An Orange player came up and did a sliding tackle with both feet from the front. He didn’t contact the player or the ball, but I believed the tackle to be careless given that it was with two feet and was very close to the other player. I whistled and called a DFK for the Red team. I was discussing this with another Ref today and he believes that I should have given a red card to the Orange player because he tackled with both feet. What should the call have been? Should I have given a card?
Answer
We don’t believe in “hard and fast” rules which don’t have a clear, firm basis in the Laws of the Game. You decided that the tackle was careless and the reasons you offered are relevant. Given this, a card of any color would have been inappropriate, if for no other reason than that an illegal tackle does not rise to a cautionable level until and unless it is deemed at least reckless.
Apparently, the conversation with “another Red” you related involved someone who thought there was some “hard and fast” rule involving having to give a red card for sliding tackles + both feet. The common indicators of a cardable tackle do not include “sliding” — what they do include are such things as:
- the direction of the tackle (because coming from behind or outside the peripheral vision of the player being tackled prevents the victim from being able to prepare for the challenge)
- coming in at high speed (greater chance of injury)
- both feet (because a two-footed slide is considered uncontrolled)
- with cleats exposed (the danger there is obvious)
- with one or both feet higher than ball height (because it suggests that there was not an attempt to play the ball, plus the inherently greater susceptibility to injury the higher up the leg you go)
The only one of the above criteria you specifically alluded to was the use of both feet and that element is one of the least likely to lead to a card.
But this leads us into another issue and that is the question of whether, all other things being equal, you must give a card under specified circumstances (which brings us back to the “hard and fast” rule business). There are only six offenses listed in the 2016/2017 version of Law 12 which can draw a caution and seven offenses leading to a red card. Some are very specific, some are couched in general terms. Once you decide that what you have seen is, in your opinion, one of these thirteen offenses, a card is expected (not giving one would require a persuasive rationale) but the real decision is whether what you saw fit the offense. It may or may not, Or, even more commonly, it might fit … and if it only “might,” then what do you use to decide? The answer is “does this behavior need a card?” For the good of the player, the good of the other players, the good of this game (the one going on right now), or the good of the sport? We know you don’t think you asked this particular question but, really, you did when you said “Should I have given a card?”
