If taking out likes of Sergio Aguero and Yaya Toure in penalty area becomes smart option, football will be guilty of foul play

• Football's rulemakers will discuss 'triple jeopardy' in the area
• Some say it's unfair to have penalty given, player sent off and then banned
• But the system at the moment works - punishment is a deterrent
• If that changes (as Pierluigi Collina would like it to) a foul in the penalty area could be the smart option for defenders
• Mario Balotelli was always the problem, not Manchester City 
• Jose Mourinho is seeing the light on Financial Fair Play 

By Martin Samuel - Sport for the Daily Mail

Published: 17:39 EST, 2 December 2014 | Updated: 11:12 EST, 3 December 2014

Scenario A. Now.

The score is 0-0, Yaya Toure is through on goal. You are the last defender. It is a good opportunity. A player of his calibre should score. You could bring him down. But do that and chances are you will be sent off. Your team will be reduced to 10 men and there are 40 minutes left. And Manchester City will most likely score the penalty anyway. Plus, you will be banned for up to three matches. Better not chance it, eh? Your goalkeeper might make the save and, even if he doesn’t, you’ve still got the best part of the half to get back in the game, 11 against 11.

Scenario B. Then.

Score 0-0, Toure through on goal, you the last defender. Except now, thanks to a meeting of the International Football Association Board, rules on triple jeopardy in the penalty area have changed. A foul resulting in a penalty kick is only worth a yellow card. And no ban. 

Mehdi Benatia brings down Sergio Aguero to concede a penalty in Manchester City's win over Bayern Munich

Benatia is shown a straight red card (left) and Aguero celebrates scoring the spot-kick

Sportsmail Big Match Stats: Manchester City 3-2 Bayern Munich

These are better odds. Sergio Aguero is off injured, Frank Lampard on the substitutes’ bench. Who is City’s next penalty taker? Is he any good? In season 2013-14, 16 per cent of penalties in the Premier League were missed. And you still have 40 minutes, 11 against 11, to get back into the game under the new regulations. To hell with it. This is worth a chance. Take the yellow and see where you are in two minutes. You never know, you might get away with it.

In sport, the punishment doesn’t always have to fit the crime. In sport, the punishment has to be the deterrent. We know that there are occasions when a defender mistimes a challenge, without viciousness, and gets hit by what must feel like a torrent of blows. First, the red card, next the penalty, then the news he will be suspended. Tough. He is the collateral damage, sacrificed to keep the game honest.

Not all fouls in the penalty area bring dismissal but for those that do there is usually a good reason. Bottom line: the system works. Occasionally, a game is spoiled by a referee’s error — but if the call is right, most people understand why taking out an opponent who is through on goal carries such fearsome retribution. 

Yaya Toure is sent sprawling by Victor Wanyama - could this become a more common occurrence?

Except, apparently, Pierluigi Collina. And, as the Italian is the most powerful refereeing figure in the world, that is a big name not to have on side.

Collina advises the International Football Association Board (IFAB) who in turn decide football’s rules and on the agenda for the spring meeting is triple jeopardy in the penalty area. Collina is against it and Stewart Regan, chief executive of the Scottish Football Association, confirmed there will be a recommendation for change.

The penalty box will be designated a special area, with reds downgraded to yellow cards, or any resulting bans erased. Either way, it can only lead to an increase in foul play. And why would any referee — or any rule-makers — want that?

The spectacle. That’s all that matters these days. It is why international teams wear blocks of one colour — it looks better on television — and why the IFAB are getting twitchy when justice is clearly being done. 

Pierluigi Collina (left) is against triple jeopardy in the area and is the most authoritative voice in rulemaking

A team reduced to 10 men at the same time as going 1-0 down are likely to lose. If it happens early on, the contest is as good as over. Can’t have that. We must find a way to level it out, even if Lionel Messi has to get kicked into the grandstand in the process, even if we as good as encourage cynical, violent play.

There is a reason why penalty kicks in rugby are worth three points; a reason the World Anti-Doping Agency are introducing four-year bans from 2015. If points for penalties were reduced, there would be occasions when foul play would be worth it. Equally, WADA tried banning athletes for two years and too many still considered doping a risk worth taking: four years takes in at least one Olympics. It could erase the pinnacle of an athlete’s career.

Football is no different. Right now, only a fool upends an opponent in the area. Change and it could be more than just an option. Change and it becomes the smart move.

It turns out Balotelli is the problem, not his clubs

On the day Liverpool signed Mario Balotelli they were playing at Manchester City. Brendan Rodgers was asked about Balotelli’s reputation for attracting trouble at his former Premier League club. Despite his sky blue surroundings he did not hold back.

‘I spent three-and-a-half hours just talking him through Liverpool,’ he said. ‘It’s a massive club and it’s a different club. It’s a family club with strong family values and ethics over many years. Behaviour is very important here.’ 

Mario Balotelli posted the image (left) on Instagram on Monday and (right) out in Manchester on Sunday night

Balotelli has struggled on the pitch for Liverpool and is becoming more of a problem off it, too

Brendan Rodgers is beginning to realise how much of a handful Balotelli can be, even when he doesn't mean it

Brendan Rodgers responds to recent Mario Balotelli controversy

At City, it is fair to say there was a sharp intake of breath. Rodgers may not have intended a slight but it was certainly taken that way. City executives felt he had implied that Liverpool possessed morals that were not present elsewhere. Balotelli would be safer with them than he was at Manchester City.

Slowly, Rodgers has discovered the truth. It was not that City did not care about Balotelli’s behaviour. There was no issue around ethics, or values. The problem was the player, not the club.

Rodgers could talk Balotelli through the Liverpool way for three-and-a-half months, let alone three-and-a-half weeks, and it would make no difference.

If Mario wants to let off a firework, he lets off a firework. If Mario wants to throw darts, he throws darts. And if Mario wants to post a message against racism, he inadvertently insults the Jews. That’s just Mario. 

The Liverpool striker was criticised for swapping his shirt with Pepe during half-time of the loss to Real Madrid

And that wasn’t Rodgers’ only miscalculation that evening. ‘He’s a very bright boy, he’s very clever,’ he said of Balotelli. Really? Is he? He posted the phrase ‘jumps like a black man and grabs coins like a Jew’ as a message of inclusivity. He might not be the intellectual titan of Rodgers’ imagination.

Indeed, the only reason Balotelli’s post does not appear to have attracted the same widespread disgust as Nicolas Anelka’s anti-Semitic quenelle gesture is because he is presumed to be almost childlike in his perspectives. Whereas Anelka’s message was insidious and knowing, Balotelli gormlessly failed to spot an ideological timebomb in what he thought was a positive statement.

His post was brightly coloured and the cartoon man shared his name. On realising his mistake he deleted and apologised.

Still, the damage is done, the Football Association machine is in motion and Liverpool will have to deal with the fall-out, whether Balotelli gets a ban, or merely a fine and another round of negative publicity.

His problems are their problems now. Balotelli invites trouble and, through him, so do Liverpool. Rodgers cannot say he wasn’t warned.

Balotelli is sent off against Arsenal, one of four red cards he received when he was a Manchester City player, and the Italian striker walks around Auschwitz with the Italy team in 2012

The striker holds up a fire safety poster after fireworks were famously set off in his bathroom

Mourinho's realising that FFP is there to make sure Man Utd are top

Jose Mourinho is the latest to see the light on Financial Fair Play. Such a staunch advocate a year ago, he now understands the real winners.

‘It is a contradiction,’ he says. ‘When football decided to go for FFP it was to put teams in equal conditions to compete. But it is a big protection to the historical, old, big clubs that have a financial structure, a commercial structure, everything in place based on success for years and years.

‘The clubs with new investment cannot quickly put themselves at the same level. Clubs with new owners cannot immediately attack the control of these big clubs.’

Indeed, but guess what? Chelsea voted for it. Chelsea were among the most significant advocates of FFP because they were selfishly worried about rivals such as Manchester City. They thought they were already part of the elite set and could raise the drawbridge on these parvenus. 

Jose Mourinho is beginning to realise that Financial Fair Play is a 'contradiction' that helps the established elite

Except City got in anyway and now Chelsea’s restricted financial clout feels increasingly inferior against that of Manchester United, Bayern Munich, Barcelona and Real Madrid. United could break the bank several times this summer, even from outside the Champions League. Chelsea had to sell Juan Mata and David Luiz to stay in the black.

Roman Abramovich is outside football’s platinum club. With UEFA having linked spending to generated wealth, the power now reverts to the elite within the elite and it will be years before Chelsea compete at their level financially.

Whether Chelsea win the league this season is not the point — the system is set up to put Manchester United back on top and the only question is when. Indeed, if Arsenal ever decide to do more than tick over, they will economically eclipse Chelsea, too.

Mourinho is a brilliant manager but, as FFP grips stronger, it will be increasingly hard to find success. This model is created for the historical, old, big clubs to conquer and how Chelsea could not see that from the start is a mystery. They sold out their natural allies, the new owners, and the true elite view them with contempt. That was Michel Platini’s great stroke of luck: his turkeys voted for Christmas.

Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich, for all his billions, is not in football's platinum club

And while we're at it 

After England manager Roy Hodgson spoke at the Cambridge Union recently, actor Sir Ian McKellen was extremely vexed. Hodgson had been asked how football would react to a player coming out as gay. Typically, he tried to be truthful without giving offence.

‘I don’t think it would cause anything like the sensation of 25 or 30 years ago,’ he said. ‘I haven’t come across it but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.’ Later, he admitted naivety on the subject. ‘It’s not my world,’ he said.

McKellen, in an interview with The Independent, was apoplectic. ‘That man is not living in the real world,’ he said. ‘He’s too absorbed in his own world and clearly it’s a world in which to be gay is not an easy thing. Five hundred professional soccer players in this country and not one of them out?

‘What is going to make the FA face up to the responsibilities of the people it’s looking after? Premiership clubs: what is their problem? They’re living in the past.’ This week, however, McKellen was on the red carpet to promote his latest turn as Gandalf in the Lord of the Rings series: The Hobbit — The Battle of the Five Armies. And would you believe it — five armies and not one of them out. 

Roy Hodgson admitted that he had not encountered any gay footballers during his career

There are no obvious gay relationships in any Lord of the Rings film. And it’s a fantasy.

The writers could have gone hog-wild on gayness if they wished. They aren’t dealing with reality, like football managers. They aren’t working with human choices, such as the desire to keep a personal life private.

Now you may argue that sexuality in The Lord of the Rings is largely irrelevant to the narrative and you would be right; but the sexuality of sports people is irrelevant, too. Gay or straight, who cares? Not, it would seem, Roy Hodgson. And that doesn’t mean he is living in the past: any more than the creators of McKellen’s Middle-Earth.

Sir Ian McKellen (left) with Orlando Bloom at the premiere of the new Lord of the Rings film

Sometimes one wonders about legal folk. It is as if they are motivated mostly by the need for hypothetical argument. Take the case of Massimo Cellino and Leeds United. 

He was found guilty of evading tax in Italy and barred from taking control at Leeds United. At which point, a QC, Tim Kerr — ‘one of the great legal minds,’ according to Legal 500 — looked at his appeal and decided that Cellino’s actions could not be considered worthy of a ban because the written judgement had not been delivered and the judge might say he had not acted dishonestly.

You may find that unlikely. The Football League certainly did, but one of the great legal minds had spoken and so they waited for the judgement. Cellino knew it, but appeared less than enthusiastic about the Football League seeing a copy, so they obtained one by court order. And sure enough, Kerr’s outsider had not come in.  

Leeds owner Massimo Cellino has been disqualified by the Football League and asked to resign from the Championship club after being found guilty of tax evasion

The judge thought Cellino deliberately evaded tax. That was why he was found guilty. Now there is a bigger mess, because Leeds is under Cellino’s control and the Football League are insisting he stands down.

There is sure to be another appeal, perhaps a waiting game — Cellino’s tax evasion conviction will be spent under Fit and Proper Persons Rules within four months — and maybe the League will press for a longer ban over the withholding of information. Either way, various legal departments will be healthily employed for the foreseeable future.

Maybe that’s why they consider Kerr so brilliant.

www.kicca.com/MartinSamuel 

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