• Simon Barnes

How taking one for the team drowns out drama

Branislav Ivanovic was sent off at Old Trafford after picking up a second yellow card © Getty Images

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The most elusive thing in football is control. Controlling a football match is a challenge on a par with herding cats and stilling mountain streams. Football is volatile and free-flowing and constantly demanding of spontaneous skill and decision-making - you really can't bend an entire football match to your will.

But you can have a good try, and that is the basis of Jose Mourinho's method. For 93 minutes he did just that against Manchester United last Sunday; shame the match lasted into the 94th.

One of the methods Chelsea used to control the match caused them to concede that hyper-late equaliser: tactical fouling. They received seven yellow cards in the match; not for mistimed tackles, still less for hot-headed malice. They were mostly for calculated fouls: fouls intended to disrupt the opponent's game. Why bother to defend a free-flowing counter-attack when you can pre-empt it with a judicious trip at the other end of the pitch?

Everybody does it, but Chelsea seldom do anything in a disorganised or half-baked fashion, so it's logical to think of fouling as a consciously deployed tactic. It worked, too, until the seventh yellow card went to a man who had already got one. As a result, Branislav Ivanovic had to leave the pitch and Manchester United scored against short-handed opponents. A classic example of a tactic blowing up in your face.

There were tactical fouls in just about every match played over the weekend, it was just that Chelsea seemed more systematic and the referee, Phil Dowd, was inclined to pick them up on it. Next weekend we have the Manchester derby and it would be extraordinary if there weren't two or three yellow cards shown for coolly executed tactical fouls. Part of the game, these days.

Two main points arise from this. The first is moral, the second practical, so let's deal with morality first. The prevalence of tactical fouls indicates a clear separation between legality and morality in football. There is no moral censure given to, say, Cesc Fabregas who performed a neat yellow-carded trip to break up a Manchester United attack before it started.

It is regarded as fair exchange. On balance, it's better to accept the card than to let the opposing player make his run. A wild two-footed tackle would get you sent off: bad thing for the team. A calm and thoughtful yellow card gains a clear advantage: good for the team. Naturally, you commit the foul. You take one for the team, and bask in your team-mates' approval.

A classic example came in the semi-finals of the 2002 World Cup when Michael Ballack got a yellow card for hauling back Lee Chun-soo of South Korea. Ballack scored the only goal of the match but missed the final through suspension. Rudi Voeller, the Germany coach, said: "The entire country will stand and applaud him".

In the Premier League players get suspended for accumulating yellow cards; essentially you are banned for a match after five but with various cut-off dates it's theoretically possible to get 14 yellow cards in a season without suspension. If a Premier League club receives six or more yellow cards in a match, they get fined £25,000 but Chelsea probably won't go into receivership as a result of their discipline at Old Trafford.

Michael Ballack missed the World Cup final after picking up a booking for a foul on South Korea's Lee Chun-soo © Getty Images

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Canny players can time that fifth yellow card to make suspension coincide with an undemanding fixture. And of course, the greater a club's strength in depth, the easier it is to cope with suspensions. Rich clubs can operate a policy of tactical fouling more effectively than poor ones.

There are still fouls that appal. Flying fists get condemned by everybody. So to a lesser extent do reckless tackles that cause serious injury. In England, but not so much elsewhere, simulation is considered immoral. Freakish incidents, like Thierry Henry's handball goal against Ireland in 2009, attract a lot of attention. But widely, among those who watch and write and comment on the game, tactical fouling is simply the way of the world.

But what would a spectator rather see? A sweeping counter-attack from one penalty area to the other, ending in a goal or a great save? Or some player trip up another? Is drama and beauty and sporting excellence worth fighting for in football? Or is it all just about results and partisanship?

If you believe football has value as spectacle, you must concede that the current system is bankrupt. The exchange of a card for a foul puts all the advantage on the team that fouls. There is no moral imperative to avoid non-dangerous fouling: fouling is commonplace. If you want spectacle, the game needs greater disincentives for the would-be fouler. A fouling player is told: that's very naughty - and that's the end of the matter. And the player congratulates himself for being smart, rather than bad.

A sin-bin is the obvious answer: a team committing a card-worthy foul must play short-handed for the next 10 - no, better 15 minutes. But the truth is that managers - by miles the most listened-to people in the game - are very happy with the system as it stands. That's because a tactical foul gives them some sort of control, or at least, the illusion of control.

There's no point on getting on one's high-horse and condemning football as a sport of moral turpitude and tactical fouling as a cancer in the game. The fact is that football's laws are not regarded as moral laws. They are not something to obey unthinkingly; they are something to think about and get round. Is a forward considered immoral when he scores a goal from an offside position?

It's not about morality: it's about practical checks and balances. If fouling is advantageous, then with Darwinian inevitability, footballers will foul. If fouling becomes less of an advantage, the balance shifts and the attitude to fouling will change. What kind of football do we - the spectators - want? Because increasingly, are getting the kind of football that managers want. Less spontaneity, more control.

Rafael picked up a yellow card for fouling Eden Hazard early on at Old Trafford © Getty Images

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