Sin-bins: Ifab will not expand trial as blue card idea scrapped

Football lawmakers Ifab will not expand a trial of sin-bins or introduce blue cards, but it plans to test new rules to improve player behaviour.

On Friday, Fifa president Gianni Infantino ruled out the introduction of blue cards in elite football.

Both ideas have been criticised by Premier League managers.

Ifab said it was improving the guidelines at grassroots level, where sin-bins have been trialled since 2017.

"Any potential wider application will only be considered once the impact of these changes have been reviewed," read an Ifab statement after its annual general meeting on Saturday.

Under the plans which emerged in February, players would be shown blue cards for dissent or tactical fouls and spend 10 minutes off the pitch in the sin-bin.

Instead, on Saturday Ifab announced three trials to improve player behaviour in domestic competitions below the top two divisions - League One and below in England:

• Only a team's captain can approach the referee in certain situations.

• There will be cooling-off periods to allow the referee to ask teams to go to their own penalty area.

• An increase in the time limit for goalkeepers holding the ball from six to eight seconds, or possession will revert to the opposing team.

The dates of the trials have not been decided.

When the possibility of using blue cards to indicate a 10-minute sin-bin emerged last month, Tottenham manager Ange Postecoglou said the idea of temporary dismissals would "destroy the game", while Liverpool boss Jurgen Klopp and Newcastle manager Eddie Howe were also critical.

Football Association chief executive Mark Bullingham, a member of the Ifab board, said there was "no backlash" and "quite a lot of support" for sin-bins when plans for a trial were announced in November.

"What happened after that was challenging - [it was] never the intention for a trial to start in the Premier League," he said.

"We've said, 'let's get the protocol right' before we move it up the pyramid. We need to get it right away from the pressure of the cameras and the fans."

On the subject of blue cards, Infantino said on Friday: "This is a topic that is non-existent for us."

What else was announced at Ifab's meeting?

The handball law has also been clarified so players are no longer at risk of a red card for accidental handball in the penalty area.

A law for additional permanent concussion substitutes will come into effect from 1 July, but it will be up to the organisers of individual competitions on whether they implement it.

Ifab first approved the trials of concussion substitutes at a meeting in 2020.

The protocol means permanent substitutions can be made if a player suffers a head injury, even if all replacements have been used.

Fifa interim secretary general Mattias Grafstrom also said referees would announce the outcome of video assistant referee (VAR) reviews at this summer's Olympics in Paris.

At the 2023 Women's World Cup referees announced VAR decisions to the crowd via microphone to fans in stadiums and viewers at home - a first at a senior Fifa international tournament.

There are no current plans to allow fans either at home or in the stadium to hear the conversations in the VAR booths in real-time.

Analysis

BBC Sport football news reporter Simon Stone

When pushed, Scottish FA chief executive Ian Maxwell was adamant that the potential implementation of sin-bins had not gone backwards following Ifab's latest meeting.

Technically, this is correct. But neither has it gone forwards.

Bullingham did outline a couple of areas where the protocols around grassroots sin-bins had been beefed up.

Firstly, players cannot return to the field of play until the ball is next out of play after their 10 minutes are up, and a sin-bin should count as a yellow card and could get someone sent off.

But there was no mention of the extension of the trial, which had been expected.

It seems clear that Infantino and Fifa as a whole were unimpressed when the reports of increased sin-bin trials and blue cards first surfaced last month - given Ifab themselves had spoken of sin-bins at their annual business meeting in November.

Infantino was among those who had not been told what was intended.

Football politics is a complex business. Ifab is the rule-making body but it is made up of representatives of all four Home Nations and world governing body Fifa. They make the decisions, not the Ifab executive.

Time will tell whether the game has started to go cool on the idea of sin-bins or if Saturday was just an example of certain people being put in their place.