Football doesn’t need a blue card

Football is becoming a testing ground for every madcap idea the supposed guardians of the sport can come up with. The latest is the blue card, a stopgap between the yellow and red cards for bookings and sendings off, designed to send players to a sin bin for ten minutes should they commit one of two offences: dissent or cynical fouls to prevent a goalscoring opportunity.

Sure, it works in rugby and ice hockey and something called roller derby where a brief period of numerical advantage can make a big difference. But as any football fan knows, this is less certain in the beautiful game. Introduce a ten minute 10 vs 11 period into a football match and you can guarantee the depleted side will simply pack the defence for 600 seconds of stupefying non-action.

It’s clearly designed to jazz up the game for a global television audience rather than for those of us who actually go to games, as I have been doing with Spurs for almost five decades as a season ticket holder.