Sending Players Off For Preventing A 'Goalscoring Opportunity'

Ever since Law 12 of the Laws of Association Football has been amended to state that a player should be shown a straight red card for 'denying an obvious goal scoring opportunity' as opposed to the use of the wording 'professional foul', it has caused controversy and much debate. The thinking behind this change was to eliminate the 'professional foul' whereby a defender would deliberately attempt to foul an opponent in order to stop him from scoring a goal in an advanced position. A good example of the cynicism involved before the introduction of this ruling would be Ronald Koeman's foul on David Platt which pretty much cost Graham Taylor his job (thanks Ronald).

However, the problem with this ruling is that a deliberate 'professional foul' like you might see Ricardo Carvalho typically commit on a Saturday afternoon is very different to simply preventing a goalscoring opportunity through an innocently mistimed tackle. 'Professional foul' is not included in the wording, meaning referees now send off players for any foul preventing a goalscoring opportunity.

Forgive me if I'm wrong, but in an instance where a goalkeeper gives away a penalty (like Robert Green against the Ukraine the

other week), this punishes the offending team twice (penalty and red card) and in many instances costs them the match through a split-second mistake. Surely a penalty kick is giving the opposition another golden goalscoring opportunity to score from and a yellow card maximum would suffice if the foul was not deliberate? Apparently not in the eyes of FIFA and Sepp. Love him or hate him, Jens Lehmann was the victim of this absolute atrocity of a ruling in the Champions League Final of 2006 and one questions whether the club football showcase of the year needed effectively ending early in the first half for the sake of an innocent mistake.

Aside from this, FIFA aren't really very good at defining this 'goalscoring opportunity' - there are no precise details given in the Laws of the game and this leads to much confusion and controversy every week. Yesterday, for example, Jamie Carragher intentionally brought down Michael Owen when he was the last man between him and goal, but was only booked. Owen was outpacing Carragher and looked set to run through on goal, so I'm not quite sure why the red card wasn't produced - this was exactly the 'professional foul' which needs punishing, but the Law is so poorly thought out and written that it fails to serve its purpose.

One major issue I have is that the Law is too rigid and poorly-worded - I referee at youth level and like to do so with a certain degree of common sense. Last season I refereed an Under 13 game and one team were 4 or 5 goals down when the opposition striker burst into the penalty box and the goalkeeper dived at his feet to try and gather the ball, but fouled the striker in the process. Obviously I gave the penalty straight away, but the result was already decided with about 10 minutes left in the game and it had been a case of lambs to the slaughter. Therefore, I decided that as the goalkeeper clearly wasn't trying to foul the guy, had done his best but his team obviously weren't very good, and looked extremely downhearted as all he looks forward to during the week is a crack at football on a Sunday morning, I left it at that. The striker scored the penalty with ease and then added another to complete his hat-trick 2 minutes later.

At the end of the game, everyone shakes hands in good spirit, and then I'm approached. I'm approached by the manager of the team whose goalkeeper gave the penalty away, and he has a question to ask me. "Just a quick question, shouldn't you have sent him off? I'm a qualified referee and assessor and I think you got that wrong, surely he deserved to go?" I'm speechless and having bitten my lip, I politely reply "well to be honest if it was the FA Cup Final at 1-1 in the last minute, probably, but the poor kid pays his fees to play on a Sunday and I don't agree to sending him off when it makes no difference to the outcome of the game, but he still gets a fine and will probably come off gutted. You have your opinion and I'll have minute, good game anyway." I walk off.

I've recently given up on refereeing for the time being - this is one of the main reasons for my decision, referees are not supposed to have common sense, let the game flow and allow for situations apparently.

Anyway, back on topic...common sense needs to be applied in the professional game. At the same time, referees are given too much power in some instances - another example of this is being able to give players yellow cards during play for diving. If a referee thinks a player has dived when he hasn't, we have seen instances of players being harshly sent off. Referees have been known to get free kick decisions and penalties wrong where in real time it looks like a defender has taken the player's legs, but in the replay we can see he has won the ball. Players are getting sent off for perfectly good tackles, like Darren Fletcher in the Semi Final of last season's Champions League. The less power referees are given to affect games through one single decision, the better in my opinion. This is increasingly the case given the change in the pace of the game over recent years, which has made their jobs far harder.

You know you're in trouble when the pundits don't even know the rule properly. I'm sick to death of Andy Gray and co saying 'he had to be sent off because he was the last man'. So if a player gets fouled at the corner flag, should he be sent off Andy seeing as he's the last man between the player and goal? Of course not, because the Law says 'goalscoring opportunity', not 'last man'. FIFA also need to clear this up and force feed it to TV companies, right before they abolish the whole thing altogether.

Perhaps a more sensible approach would be for a yellow card to be produced for prevention of a goal-scoring opportunity, with a red produced for a blatant hauling down like Carragher's or Koeman's as these surely can't be missed by officials? Or am I missing something and this is a great rule despite it ruining the spectacle of many a game, effectively deciding them in an instant despite away supporters travelling hundreds of miles in some instances to be entertained?