Jamie O’Hara has blasted the idea of sin-bins being brought into football, insisting that it would ruin the game and lead to more injuries.
The sin-bin, which is used in sports like rugby and field hockey, involves a player being asked to sit out for a brief period of around five to 10 minutes, thus temporarily reducing a team to ten men.
The Telegraph explained that as per the recommendation of the International Football Association Board (IFAB), the idea could be trailed in football next season for offences like tactical fouling, which do not meet the threshold for a sending-off but for which a yellow is deemed to be too lenient.
O’Hara is not a fan of the idea, insisting that the lawmakers are destroying the beautiful game with their proposals.
The pundit told Grosvenor Sport: “The sin-bin idea is a load of old rubbish, and I’m trying very hard not to swear. The lawmakers are ruining football, they’re ruining the beautiful game that we all love and are obsessed with; the best game in the world.
“They brought in VAR, which has absolutely ruined the game for the spectator, for the fans, for the managers and players, and now they’re talking about sin-bins? What are we, kids? It’s an absolute disgrace, treating players like Mickey Mouse schoolchildren.
“It’s a load of old crap. It’s the bigwigs up top thinking of things we can do to make the game better, but they’re ruining the game. The game was great because it wasn’t perfect. That’s what made football great and now all they are doing is making it worse. Every single time they do something, they make it worse.
“You’ll have sinbinned players sitting on the side for 10 minutes, they’re going to get cold so they’re going to need to warm up again! You’re going to see players sitting on the sidelines on an exercise bike having to keep warm! It’s a joke, get rid of it. They’re a disgrace, they all need sacking. What are we going to see next?
“How about the referees start getting more decisions right? How about we get some better referees and we might get some decent football matches again. What are you going to do, take a player off like a kid and leave him on the sidelines? It’s not rugby, so why are we trying to take things from rugby?”
Sometimes football needs to be left alone
The former Tottenham man opined that all the recent modifications to the game, including the implementation of VAR, and more recently, adding more injury time, have backfired.
He added: “Look what VAR has done to the game, it’s ruined it. I’m sick of it. As a football fan and a pundit, having to go on and talk about this crap, it’s a joke. I’m sick of having to come on and talk about VAR every week, and now I’m going to have to talk about sin-bins…
“‘Should he have got sinbinned for that? It cost them the game…’ What if a team have already had a player sent off and now they’re down to nine men? Give me a break. None of this stuff has been good for the game.
“Why are we always changing the rules at the top level and ruining the game? Referees don’t know how to deal with players and they make bad decisions, so they’ll come up with any kind of nonsense to put it on the players, to blame the players, who make the game what it is.
“They’re taking all of this away and the players are turning into robots. Everyone is turning up their noses at football now.
“Even with VAR now, they’re talking about looking at throw-ins and corners, what foot it came off… The game is absolutely gone. Take me back to the early-2000s, when you could actually play football and you could celebrate when the ball went in the back of the net.”
“We talk about injuries, half the Premier League is currently out injured because of the amount of minutes they’ve added on this season and the amount of games players are having to play. Now they want them to sit on the sidelines for 10 minutes…
“They’re going to get cold, come back on and then pull their hamstring. They’re clueless. They’re treating us like schoolchildren because the referees aren’t good enough. They’ve lost the plot, the lot of them.”
Spurs Web Opinion
I personally quite like the idea of a sin-bin as there are many tackles and fouls that fall into the grey area of not being red-card worthy but deserving of more than a yellow card, with Matty Cash’s challenge on Bentancur being a good example.
I also disagree with O’Hara’s premise that the game is this pure, unchanging thing that we are trying to tamper with. Football has always been subject to changes and improvement. It is worth pointing out that the red card was only introduced into English football in 1976.