Taking tackling to where it should not go in British league

battle to earn the right to play.

Earning the right to play can appear as some kind of code which translates as meaning that, in England, or in the British game, a certain level of aggression is deemed more acceptable than elsewhere, and is therefore almost demanded. We even appear to play our own version of the rules – hence the outcry, led by former players, when referee Michael Oliver rightly sent off Ander Herrera during Manchester United’s FA Cup tie against Chelsea because United were persistently fouling and targeting Eden Hazard.

Oliver was right. He had identified a tactic that was potentially dangerous and he had to stop it.

Crowds in England still roar more approvingly than anywhere else when a player charges into a tackle, sending himself, his opponent and the ball into the advertising hoardings, while the most overused word in football is ‘passion’.

At the same time, former pros appear to lament the passing of the days when your first tackle – however dirty – was a ‘freebie’. You had a chance to put in a ‘reducer’ on your opponent, ‘to let him know you are there’, without fear of serious sanction.

“A good old British game,” Wales manager Chris Coleman had said of his nation’s World Cup qualifier against the Republic of Ireland in Dublin and, although he meant it innocently enough, the phrase jarred terribly in the context of what happened on the pitch, where Seamus Coleman’s leg was snapped in a challenge that should never have happened.

And, by the way, it was not a good game. It stank. It stank because the players got distracted into something that football should not be about. So the poor challenges racked up: Shane Long on Ashley Williams; Glenn Whelan on Joe Allen; Gareth Bale on John O’Shea and, 55 seconds later, Taylor on Coleman.

Would Taylor have made such a reckless, studs-up, dangerous tackle had the circumstances been different? We will never know; just as we will never really know whether he meant it or not; just as we will never know whether he is ‘that kind of player’ or not. It is all fairly meaningless because the damage is done and Coleman has suffered a double leg-break.

In mitigation, Taylor, 28, has had only one previous red card and, of course, is not known as a violent player – but he did it. He dived in dangerously.

“The basic advice if you’re up against a world-class player is, somebody get to him as quick as you can, and don’t let him get his head up like he does at Real Madrid,” Roy Keane, Ireland’s assistant manager, had said of Bale before the fixture, which was reasonable enough. But then he added: “Tackle him. Hit him, fairly. Tackling is part of the game.” Hit him? How do you ‘hit’ someone fairly?

With words like that, Wales will have known that this was going to be a battle.

So, was that passing through Taylor’s mind when, as replays show, there was that split second of hesitation when he stops, surely thinking that he could not get the ball, and then launches himself, presumably convinced that he could?

No one should want to sanitise football, but neither should we shrug when challenges are made that are unacceptable.

Unfortunately for Coleman the damage is done, and for Taylor, as there is no reason to disbelieve reports that he has been traumatised. The psychological effect will be deep for both players.

Accidents do happen. Broken legs occur. But we do not want to see scenes such as in Dublin on Friday night. The game must get tougher on penalising these challenges, and impose lengthier bans. But attitudes also have to change. After Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s clash with Bournemouth’s Tyrone Mings, the Manchester United manager, Jose Mourinho, said: “We are from that generation of street football and football for big guys. So what happened, happened. Game over. What counts is the result and nothing else matters for us.” He is wrong. Football is an aggressive sport. But that aggression should be channelled into the sport, tactically and technically, and the sooner the ‘British’ game realises that the better. It is not as if behaving the way it can do has been a great success. Players like Rakitic are not scared of the way the game can be played here. They are not intimidated. — The Daily Telegraph

● The Premier League will resume this weekend with neither Pep Guardiola nor Jürgen Klopp on course to win the title. But we should be thankful that they are both working in this country. Manchester City and Liverpool delivered a marvellous, committed attacking match as the Premier League signed off before the international break. It is testimony to the football that both managers demand.

Coaches such as Klopp and Guardiola are of the mind-set that football is an offensive rather than defensive game. They might not always win, but they always want to win.

This is not to denigrate more defensiveminded coaches, and Antonio Conte has struck a balance at Chelsea.

But it is glorious to have these elite managers who want to entertain, who will not compromise and who are raising standards across the league.