Why The Red Card Isn't A Big Enough Punishment Anymore (Sometimes)
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Why The Red Card Isn't A Big Enough Punishment Anymore (Sometimes)

Why The Red Card Isn't A Big Enough Punishment Anymore (Sometimes)

The red card - the final boss of football controversy. Over the years, we have seen red cards given for the most insignificant oversteps (Van Persie vs Barcelona springs to mind), while on the flip side, we have seen red cards given when a jail sentence would have been fairer (Roy Keane on Alfe Haaland).

The red card is an unforgiving entity - with the power to remove a player from the pitch, as well as ban them from one or more future games, you would think the incentive is there to play as cleanly as possible, in a bid to avoid catching the referee’s attention.

But the 2025/26 season has seen Chelsea throw caution to the wind when it comes to the dreaded red piece of card - across all competitions, the Blues have had a man sent off seven times, and although one of these was for manager Enzo Maresca, six early baths for on-field players does not exactly sound better.

It got us wondering - is there enough incentive to avoid the red card? Should there be further punishment depending on the severity of the offence? And furthermore, is the level of refereeing consistent? Could officials do better in their decision-making of what is a red card or not?

The Current Lay of the Land

The current ruling around the red card has remained unchanged in years - if a player receives two yellow cards, they accumulate to a red, resulting in their removal from the pitch and a further one-game ban. If a straight red card is shown for a particularly nasty challenge, the player is also removed from the pitch, but is instead slapped with a three-game ban.

This has been the lay of the land for some time now and, for the most part, has worked - very few times in recent football history do you find a team with a disciplinary record as messy as Chelsea’s.

So when Caicedo was shown a straight red card for a studs-up, ankle-high challenge on Mikel Merino on Sunday evening, the majority agreed that a straight sending-off was the right call, no matter how much writhing and faking an injury Caicedo did to convince the referee otherwise.

It truly was a poor challenge, and some would even stretch as far as saying that Caicedo deserves a fine along with the ban - the Premier League does enforce a financial penal system, but the maximum figure a player must pay for receiving a red card is just £55 - mere pennies to those earning hundreds of thousands a week.

To rival fans, it was just another example of Chelsea’s youthful inexperience, and the poor decision-making that inevitably comes hand in hand with such a trait. Prior to Caicedo receiving his marching orders, the Blues had been shown two previous straight reds - one for Robert Sanchez against Man United and another to Trevoh Chalobah against Brighton.

Chelsea fans (myself included) won’t even argue that they didn’t deserve any one of those red cards - the straight reds were clear and obvious, while the double-bookings were equally clear-cut, with valid grounds for sending off on each occasion.

However, what they can argue about is the massively inconsistent standards of refereeing from game to game - why can’t the officials make the same decision less than a month apart?

Inconsistent Officiating

The incident that we Chelsea fans would be referring to occurred in another London derby just under a month ago, when the Blues visited Tottenham Hotspur. The visitors led 1–0 in added time before the break, and clearly, Tottenham’s Rodrigo Bentancur was growing a little frustrated.

So, the Uruguayan international decided that the only way to blow off steam was to commit a challenge almost identical to Caicedo’s on Reece James, who, coincidentally, put in a monumental shift against Arsenal yesterday.

The challenge, for all intents and purposes, was a mirror image of the “reckless” foul Caicedo left on Merino, and yet the match officials only deemed it severe enough for a yellow card (which comes with a Premier League-mandated fine of £10, by the way.)

Maresca was quick to latch onto the officiating inconsistency in his post-match interview, saying, “It’s (Caicedo’s tackle) a red card. But why was Bentancur against us not a red card? So as a manager, I struggle to understand why they judge in a different way. Moi is a red card, Bentancur is a red card, but do they judge differently?”

Chelsea journalist Dan Scott took a more personal view on the two incidents, controversially saying, “There’s a pattern here. When Chelsea makes a strong challenge, it’s an immediate red. But when other teams do the exact same thing against Chelsea, the referee suddenly sees nothing. It’s becoming a consistent habit and it needs to be called out.”

While it might be a bit extreme to say that the PGMOL has an agenda against the current World Champions, there is certainly something to be said for the Bentancur/Caicedo crossover. Either Caicedo’s should be downgraded to a yellow, something which I think would be wrong, or Bentancur’s challenge could in hindsight be upgraded to a red, meaning that he receives a delayed ban for his full-blooded tackle.

Given the controversy that has surrounded VAR since its introduction to the English top flight and the general fear and apprehension that the PGMOL have over owning their mistakes, this simply won’t happen, but it is something to at least be aware of. Who is to say that the exact same tackle next week gets a yellow card again?

The VAR team needs to have a more foolproof way of deciding on the severity of punishment for a challenge like that. Whether it be referring back to similar past tackles in order to decide on a suitable penalty, or creating a substantial set of guidelines on how to decide on the severity, something needs to change - if it doesn’t, challenges like this will continue to either be punished or go unpunished at random.

Financial Penalties

Don’t worry, I’m not going to simply gloss over the fact that a red card costs a player £55. A figure which is spread across UK football, from the Premier League to the grassroots games, it is a figure that both Erling Haaland and your local shopkeeper filling in at right-back would have to pay if shown a straight red.

Though it can be considered a fair punishment at the grass roots level, and even in the lower National League, financial incentive to avoid a red card in the higher divisions is virtually non-existent.

However, in the past, the Premier League’s governing body has shown itself willing to exceed the outlined financial boundaries in the case of a particularly severe event. One notorious case is that of Eric Cantona and his infamous kung-fu kick on a particularly rowdy Crystal Palace fan back in 1995 - the Frenchman received a nine-month ban for his atrocious acrobatics.

Another occurred when Luis Suarez received a 10-game ban in the wake of his confirmed racial abuse towards Manchester United’s Patrice Evra, a punishment which nowadays would arguably earn an even heftier ban.

However, you’ll notice that on both occasions, neither incurred a financial penalty. This is because these fines are usually done on an intra-club basis.

The fine handed out by a Premier League club to the player in question can range from anywhere between £2,500 and £12,500. Certainly a much more significant figure than the English FA’s puny fine, but still not really enough for a league which boasts hundreds of players on contracts worth multi-millions per year.

So between a growing discipline problem in the league (there were three red cards shown this weekend alone) and the virtually inconsequential fines given to the offending players, the Premier League needs to rethink their punishment for poor discipline.

Obviously, the incentive to avoid a ban is there, but in terms of a financial penalty, players really have nothing to worry about. In my mind, the ideal punishment the Premier League could introduce is to match the fine given by the club, effectively doubling the cost. That way, at least players would think twice before making the same mistake again.

However, this can only work if the levels of officiating become more consistent - if two identical tackles are punished differently, the message it sends is very clear: “We don’t know what we’re doing.” It would become nigh on impossible to introduce new regulation surrounding fines if one player receives punishment, while another who commits the same offence gets away scot-free.

Benji Kosartiyer
Journalist

Harry Pascoe

Lead Writer

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