Two blues equal a red
The new protocol announced tomorrow will limit the new card to fouls that prevent a promising attack plus dissent, as well as confirming a player should be shown a red card if they receive two blue cards during a match or a combination of yellow and blue.
Top-tier competitions will be excluded from initial testing in the professional game in case the protocols require further refinement, but elite trials could still begin as soon as the summer.
That may include in the FA Cup and Women’s FA Cup, with the Football Association considering volunteering next season’s competitions for testing.
But sin-bins will not be used in this summer’s European Championship or next term’s Champions League after the president of Uefa, Aleksander Ceferin, told Telegraph Sport last month he was completely opposed to them, adding: “It’s not football anymore.”
The European governing body nevertheless could be forced to introduce them if, as expected, trials led to them being added to the laws of the game.
Rugby-style measures
Ifab, the board of which includes FA chief executive Mark Bullingham, first agreed in November to test the rugby-style measure in elite competitions such as the Premier League.
Sin-bins have worked successfully at tackling dissent for many years at grass roots and youth level.
As reported by Telegraph Sport, Ifab also approved a global trial of another rugby union rule that would see only team captains allowed to speak to the match referee about a decision.
The trials have been fast-tracked amid dire warnings from Ifab’s leaders about player behaviour, of which they said: “This might be the cancer that kills football.”
Ifab’s annual business meeting decided that sin-bins were key to clamping down on this, as well as on any foul that prevented a promising attack but did not meet the threshold for a red card.
One example given during the meeting was Italy defender Giorgio Chiellini’s shirt-pull on England’s Bukayo Saka in the final of Euro 2020, which only resulted in a yellow card.
