I was a Premier League referee that managed Keane and Terry – blue cards are NONSENSE we are over-complicating football

THE idea to introduce blue cards into football is nonsense.

Trials in amateur and youth games in both England and Wales saw referees have the power to send players off the pitch for 10 minutes for dissent or denying a promising attack.

Mark Halsey does not want blue cards introduced into the gameRex

Halsey dealt with hard men such as former Manchester United captain Roy KeaneAlamy

But I’d like to know what the full protocol will be because I have major doubts.

Firstly, I don’t see a difference between a current yellow card and this new blue card?

Yellow cards are already used as a warning to players that if they persist with misconduct then further punishment will follow. So what’s the difference?

We don’t need blue cards if officials manage the game properly in its
current form.

I never showed many yellow cards for dissent throughout my career
because one of the main jobs of a referee is to have control and man-manage the players on the pitch.

And I had to manage the likes of Craig Bellamy, Roy Keane, Alan
Shearer, John Terry, Danny Murphy, Gary Neville and Steven Gerrard, who were all big personalities and not afraid to tell me what they
thought of my decisions!

By bringing in a blue card is effectively telling officials they have lost the art of managing players.

Rather than show a yellow or what could be a blue card I would speak
and build relationships to avoid further sanction and maintain fair
play.

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Another point on this is tactical or cynical fouls are not worded in the laws of the game so why are we changing our game for something so trivial?

Whether this comes into non-league or elite football it doesn’t matter.

Who is going to enjoy a match that could be decided by blue cards?

Imagine watching a game with nine players against seven – it would
make the game farcical.

Officials have enough on their plates at the moment without sending
players to a sin-bin for 10 minutes.

We are over-complicating football and only going to confuse more people.

It’s a simple game which is being made difficult by others.

Just look at VAR. As I have said many times, it’s been a disaster since its introduction.

Football has been in existence for many years but IFAB are constantly
trying to spoil our game.

They have regular meetings about law changes but are they talking to the people that matter? They are only making the game worse.

Please leave it alone.