Tactical fouls blight on game
The so-called professional foul in football should result in a sin-binning, argues Matt Dickinson
WHEN the game changes, should the laws adapt to keep up? That, it seems to me, is the fundamental question thrown up by today’s prevalence of the ‘‘tactical foul’’ in matches and football culture.
The habit and the phrase have become as commonplace as the high press — and, oddly, treated in much the same way as a natural, modern trend — even though one is legitimate and requires physical and mental qualities, and the other is so archly cynical and crude that it takes just one trip, tug or malign block.
There seems remarkably little resistance or concern, despite it becoming an infuriating epidemic, spreading into the majority of games I watch, and used to stifle one of the great joys of football, the high-speed counter-attack, through blatantly playing man rather than ball.
One such attacking move was Portsmouth’s 94th-minute winner away to Norwich City in the FA Cup third round last Sunday; a thrilling, fast-paced surge from deep in one penalty area to a superb finish by Andre Green at the other end. Brilliant, dramatic, decisive football.
The reaction of Daniel Farke, the Norwich head coach, was instructive, bemoaning the failure of his players to take ‘‘one or two opportunities for us to commit a tactical foul in the build-up [to the goal]’’.
This matter-of-fact admonishment of his players for not saving themselves with a trip, a shirt-pull, perhaps a rugby tackle was just one casual public admission of what we all know goes on up and down the country. We see it.
Undermining the joy of the game? Diminishing skill and excitement? Absolutely, but a manager would call it acting professionally. Fans are happy if their team prevent an attack or howl in outrage if on the receiving end — but, through all the fog of selfinterest, we can surely recognise that the laws are failing the game if this ugly trend goes unchecked.
A caution (when it is given, which is far from always) is evidently insufficient disincentive when the practice is so common. The laws should encourage good play, and protect good players. They are not working if tripping an opponent near the halfway line, wherever the ball happens to be, is a job well done.
The threat of a caution? Smart sides make sure that they spread tactical fouls around the team, often using players not liable to pick up bookings in other ways. At Chelsea, where Jose Mourinho made it a crucial part of his armoury, it would often be Frank Lampard. At Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City, where they are among the best at this brazen art to reduce the risk of playing high up the field, it may be Bernardo Silva, who has deployed it in big games against United and Liverpool this season
After Mourinho talked last year about how hard it was to counter City — ‘‘many times, they need what is called a tactical foul,’’ he said Guardiola was quick to deny that it was strategic. His response was an insult to the intelligence and we should say so despite all his team’s bewitching gifts.
Domenec Torrent was Guardiola’s assistant for more than a decade at Barcelona, Bayern Munich and City and he could not have been more transparent.
‘‘When we lose the ball it’s very important for Pep to press high in five seconds. If you don’t win it back within five seconds then make a foul and go back,’’ Torrent explained, leaving no room for doubt.
It is what most teams do, spontaneously or otherwise. At Wembley on Wednesday, Chelsea winger Eden Hazard set off with the ball moments after Harry Kane’s penalty. Knowing the importance of protecting the lead in those vulnerable moments, Harry Winks stepped straight across the Chelsea attacker. Winks held up his hand instantly to accept the caution, job done. That’s football, but should it be? Should the International Football Association Board, which is responsible for the laws of the game, not consider doing something about it? Intent is a difficult area for any official, but should a foul with no attempt to play the ball not have its own category, somewhere between a standard yellow card and a red? An orange? The tactical foul strikes me as exactly where the game could be looking at sin-bins.
Would a player deliberately trip a Hazard, Marcus Rashford or Mohamed Salah launching a dangerous attack if they knew that, instead of helping their side, they would be leaving them one man down for 10 minutes.
Sin-bins have been trialled in park leagues, notably in Nottinghamshire, where a yellow card leads to 10 minutes on the sidelines.
One happy outcome has been a huge drop in cautions for dissent, by up to 38 per cent, which is another reason to look at it in the elite game if the FA is ever to get serious about confronting the culture of abuse.
Neale Barry, the FA’s head of refereeing, responded positively to the experiments by saying that he felt sin-bins would be ‘‘rolled out across grassroots football in the coming years’’. But why not improve the game at the very top?
The threat of a sin-bin would markedly increase the jeopardy inherent in a tactical foul, especially late in a game when a player has little to fear from a first caution, and help improve the spectacle.
It is surely worth looking at, though whether the game wants to adapt is another question.
The entrenched antipathy of many to the new video assistant referee has highlighted an essential conservatism.
But the game does change in speed, tactics, pattern and, indeed, the nature of infractions. Laws do too, like the belated introduction in 1990 of the red card for the ‘‘professional foul’’.
It took 10 years from Willie Young’s notorious scything down of a goalbound Paul Allen (West Ham) in the 1980 FA Cup final, for which the Arsenal defender received only a booking, to bring about a necessary change to properly punish the worst acts of cynicism.
We should not dawdle so long this time.
‘‘The threat of a sin-bin would markedly increase the jeopardy inherent in a tactical foul.’’