2026 FIFA World Cup Thread

#501      
the juiceman cometh
OrangeBlue98 said:
The only issue is that the Laws and current VAR protocol tie the officials’ hands here. This was reviewed under the “mistaken identity” clause. This means if you identify one player getting a yellow and the other player should get it because of simulation, then you can’t make up something to get out of the yellow for the Swiss player.

FIFA made this a black and white, objective thing. If you card the defender and you then have “mistaken identity” by definition you have to give the caution to the correctly identified player. I think this is a “good in theory, bad in practice” application, but it’s in the Laws and must be followed as written.

Had the referee not carded the Argentina player, nothing happens. So he blows a call and then has to give a card that altered the course of the game
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This is all correct. But the one thing I'll just stress here is it only feels like the yellow card is wrong because most of the time refs are too reluctant to give out yellow cards for simulation, which is why players dive all the time. Nobody likes the diving. But the only way to stop it is to actually punish it which nobody seems to want to do either.

Refs just have to enforce the rule more often. I get not calling simulation when there's some contact and the guy goes down too easy, but if someone is falling down with no contact refs need to bring out the card every time. Giving the ref discretion on the VAR so he can pocket the yellow and not punish the simulation is not a move in the right direction.
 
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