toscano
Refugee
- Joined
- Mar 31, 2005
- Messages
- 2,032
A couple things:
1. There are too many situations where it's advantageous for a player to commit a foul but where a red would be inappropriate; it has to be disincentivized somehow.
2. You have to understand that soccer was meant to be played over a long season (38 games, home and away in a 20-team league in England, Spain and Italy). Suspending a player for yellow card accumulation makes perfect sense there. Similarly, you can assume that bad penalties/red cards/offside decisions/etc. come out in the wash over the course of a season. Soccer is really poorly suited to single-elimination tournaments, which is what makes the World Cup so exciting and so maddening at the same time. I'm not sure you really want to come up with radically new rules specifically for a playoff setting (well, other than PKs, which I think are the worst way to resolve a tie in a playoff match, except for all the others).
Spain also had 2 of their, arguably, best players out due to not being fully fit/match ready after serious injuries from their club season in Fabregas and Torres.
They have a lot of talent AND depth.