Forged your thoughts again to August 2022. Tottenham defender Cristian Romero tugged again Chelsea‘s Marc Cucurella by way of his hair.
The VAR, Mike Dean, opted to not intrude for an glaring pink card.
It created a line within the sand. From that time on, a nil tolerance method was once followed.
Has the hair been tugged? Then this can be a pink card for violent habits.
A strict software manner we need to settle for that there are instances, like Keane and Martinez, the place the punishment seems too serious.
This is a bit like handball within the Champions League. Other folks don’t like one of the vital consequences, however they know what they’re getting.
If you need consistency then you can not have commonplace sense too.
After the Keane pink card, referees’ boss Howard Webb was once very transparent that hair pulling was once “slightly an offensive factor”.
“It was once the suitable result,” Webb mentioned. “It was once abnormal but when we see it once more subsequent week it’s going to be the similar result.”
It took a couple of months sooner than we did see it in identical cases with Martinez, and Webb was once proved to be proper.
There has handiest been one different VAR pink card within the Premier League, for Southampton’s Jack Stephens on Cucurella.
There were a number of different cases within the Membership International Cup, Girls’s Tremendous League and Girls’s Euros.
Hair pulling is a kind of darkish arts which is in most cases handiest noticed thru video proof.
It occurs off the ball however is extra identifiable than the sophisticated elbow to the chest or a nip to the tummy.
Even within the EFL, which doesn’t have VAR, Ipswich’s Leif Davis was once just lately banned after being picked up on digicam pulling the hair of Leicester’s Caleb Okoli.
Proof isn’t at all times transparent, on the other hand.
Fulham‘s Kenny Tete may have been despatched off for yanking the hair of Manchester Town‘s Antoine Semenyo in February. It should neatly have came about, however the VAR didn’t really feel the proof was once conclusive sufficient for a assessment.