FIFA has denied reports in various media that say that football will introduce blue cards at the elite level of football next season. Several leading media in England such as the Telegraph, Sky Sports and The Athletic wrote on Friday (9/2/2024) about how IFAB (the body that makes rules in football) will introduce blue cards starting next season.
The blue card is a new disciplinary system that gives referees the power to send a player off the pitch for 10 minutes after he commits a cynical foul or excessive protest. Two blue cards will result in a player being sent off the field, likewise if the player concerned receives a blue card and then a yellow card.
The FA will reportedly start testing this “sin bins” system in the men’s and women’s FA Cups next season. IFAB is said to be publishing a detailed protocol this Friday in football’s efforts to quell protests in football and cynical fouls. One example of a blue card discussed at Thursday’s IFAB meeting was Italian centre-back Giorgio Chiellini’s t-shirt tug on England striker Bukayo Saka which only resulted in a yellow card in the Euro 2020 final.
“Sin bins” already exist in amateur and youth football in England and Wales, but the referee mostly uses yellow cards, not blue cards. IFAB first agreed in November to test it at a higher level in the football pyramid. Nevertheless, FIFA issued a statement on Friday that all the news about blue cards at the top level of football was still “premature”.
“FIFA would like to clarify that reports of so-called ‘blue cards’ at the elite level of football are false and premature,” tweeted the FIFA on X. “Such testing, if implemented, should be limited to responsible testing at lower levels, a position FIFA intends to reiterate when this agenda is discussed at the IFAB AGM on 2 March.”
One Premier League observer who is also a former Arsenal midfielder, Paul Merson, expressed his opinion that the introduction of this blue card would “ruin football”. “Putting someone in the sin bin for 10 minutes, you kill the game,” he said on Sky Sports. “You’d have 10 players behind the ball all the time, it would be the most boring football ever. What a waste of time. All they’re going to do during those 10 minutes is spend time on throw-ins, goal kicks, they’re going to buy fouls, and that’s just going to result in the worst 10 minutes imaginable.”
