Soccer's conservatism strikes against 'Blue Card'
Being afraid of change stops the trail of this interesting idea
When the news first broke that there would be a new “Blue Card” I was pretty excited about it. It was an interesting idea and one that the usually very cautious governing body of the sport is slow to make.
The changes proposed were fairly minor, dealing with surrounding the referee and cynical fouls that stop counter-attacking situations. From ESPN’s post on the subject, this is was proposed to be trailed:
A proposed trial whereby only the team captain may approach the referee in certain game situations was backed and it was also agreed that temporary dismissals for dissent and specific tactical offences should be trialled at higher levels.
The response to the idea seemed to be generally poor and there was enough backlash that IFAB scrapped the idea entirely. Here is what FIFA posted on Twitter in response to the news, basically killing the plan.
"FIFA wishes to clarify that reports of the so-called 'blue card' at elite levels of football are incorrect and premature. Any such trials, if implemented, should be limited to testing in a responsible manner at lower levels, a position that FIFA intends to reiterate when this agenda item is discussed at the IFAB AGM on 1 March."
What is bummer for me is that this was a potentially very good idea and getting a test of the potential second-order impacts would have been really helpful for understanding what it could do to the game.
One of the things that is hard right now in the sport is that there are essentially two levels of punishment. One where it is a slap on the wrist, this is most fouls and even yellow cards. The second is incredibly harsh punishments, either red cards or penalties.
There are times where these penalties fit but there are lots of situations in between where things either end up too light or too heavy. This throws off the optimal strategies and I think makes the game worse. It is positive that the people in charge are thinking about this, but a bummer that so many aren’t willing to see things change to see if it can be better.
The situations that I think are most obviously out of whack right now are the cynical fouls that stop teams from counter-attacking and the difference in what is a foul in the box vs outside of the box.
The blue card doesn’t affect the penalty stuff so we will leave it aside for now and focus on the counter-attack problem. These are some of the more exciting plays in the game and we should want to see more of them. These are also the kinds of plays that potentially give smaller teams better chances against superior teams to score goals.
Too often here a team will be breaking and as the play develops a defender will cynically foul stopping a potentially good counter-attacking play from developing and all the attacking team gets is a free kick around the halfway line that is basically worthless as a scoring opportunity and a yellow card for one of the opposing team’s players.
A yellow card is not nothing but with the way the game is officiated and with our maximum punishment model, it rarely ends up being a real deterrent. This season just 2% of yellow cards have come with a second yellow card, there are numerous situations that we have all seen where a player on a yellow card has the extra benefit of the doubt for the level of foul required because the referee is reluctant to give the max punishment it comes with.
In our cynical foul situation, we can estimate the cost in terms of goals of that yellow card turning into a second yellow at some point during the game and it is a bit more than 0% to 2%. Compared to a potential fast break that might end in a 30-40% shot if executed correctly that is a no-brainer trade-off to make.
If those situations are only executed 25% of the time that is an expected goal value of 7-10% for the attacking team turned into 0% at the low cost of a yellow card.
It is hard to know the exact impact of a Blue Card (that’s why it would be good to try it out) but using estimates from Red Cards as a basis would point to sending off a player would be a punishment of 0.10 to 0.25 total goals (combing fewer goals scored and more goals allowed) in the 10 minute period where they are down a player.
That is a punishment that comes a lot closer to the value of what the team is stopping and is the right kind of a little bit higher to make it a deterrent. It is also not so big of a punishment that a referee would be looked at like he was having a massive swing on the game.
This is the problem with red cards, especially early in matches. A red card on average is worth 1 goal for the team that goes a man up, if it happens early in the game can be worth even more than a goal total in punishment between lost attack and benefit for the attacking teams.
This is the problem with penalties as well, where things that are fouls outside of the box have a different threshold because a penalty is worth 0.8 goals! The referee is rightly reluctant to give marginal calls when the swing is so big.
I understand the perspective that this will potentially complicate decisions for referees and that it does seem like things are well done right now. Those are valid complaints, I just don’t think that they address what is at stake here.
It doesn’t seem like it would vastly complicate the referee’s decision-making at all. It would go from is this a foul/no foul, and if it is a foul is this a card/no card situation to is this a foul/no foul, and if it is a foul is this a card/no card situation. It is the same level of complicated decision-making, the punishment for it just changes from basically nothing to a player having to stay off the field for 10 minutes.
Hopefully, the inherent conservatism in the sport can be overcome and we can see the true effect of this on the field. Maybe these people that doubt are correct and this is a bad idea and it can be scrapped and not brought back but maybe it is also something that addresses a real problem and makes the game better.