By Andrew Warshaw
April 16- Sepp Blatter says referees too often go over the top in the way they caution and send off players, sometimes inflaming incidents in the process.
The Fifa President says red and yellow cards should be shown with restraint rather than brandished in players’ faces as some referees are prone to do.
With the World Cup looming, Blatter is keen to ensure that officials do not become the centre of attention.
Writing in The Fifa Weekly magazine, he points out that disciplinary measures are supposed to be mainly informative – to both players and spectators.
“However, referees do not always seem aware of the purely informational nature of these tools,” he writes in his column. “They sometimes misuse cards as a show of strength against the players, squaring up to the offenders and ostensibly brandishing the cards in their faces.”
“That is the wrong signal, unnecessarily raising the emotional temperature of what is, in most cases, an already heated situation. A competent referee has no need of such carryings-on. Instead he should call the player over, inform him of the verdict and unemotionally hold up the card, regardless of whether it is red or yellow. The card is a signal, just like a traffic light. No more and no less.”