Liverpool could be without Alexander Isak for the rest of the season with the perpetrator going unpunished but should that change?
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Football is a game of clichés. Arne Slot would have been “over the moon” to pick up three points against Tottenham even if one incident would have left him seeing red.
The whole season has been one step forward, one step back for Liverpool with the win over Spurs giving fans a glimpse of what might be as Hugo Ekitike, Florian Wirtz and Alexander Isak linked up to open the scoring. The £300m strike force finally showing what it is capable of. That Isak didn’t get back up shouldn’t have been a surprise to the Reds boss given the luck that both the player and he has had to endure so far in what has been a campaign fraught with problems.
Premier League should make late tackle law change
On this occasion, it was Micky van de Ven’s challenge that saw the Sweden international hobble off the park with the help of the medical staff in a tackle that should have seen Spurs punished with more than the concession of the first goal. Anywhere else on the pitch, if a player makes a scissor tackle it would be at least a yellow card. If a player is that late with a tackle, they would also be punished with a similar outcome. That Van de Ven was late and scissor tackled Isak leaving him with a suspected broken leg should have been enough to see him sent off in the type of incident that defenders get away with on a regular basis.
Just because an attacking player gets a shot away, it doesn’t mean that the defender shouldn’t get punished if they then collide with them. Attempting to block a shot should be no different to attempting to block a cross. Van de Ven’s tackle is the very definition of serious foul play as laid out by Law 12 via The FA’s laws of the game guidance: “A tackle or challenge that endangers the safety of an opponent or uses excessive force or brutality must be sanctioned as serious foul play. “Any player who lunges at an opponent in challenging for the ball from the front, from the side or from behind using one or both legs, with excessive force or endangers the safety of an opponent is guilty of serious foul play.” The Spurs defender ticked at least four boxes.
Isak injury could have been avoided
With VAR, there is no excuse for referees not to be sent to the monitor to have a second look at tackles such as the one that now sees Isak with a suspected broken leg and almost certainly ruled out for the season. Whether it is the referees and Howard Webb that need to address it, the FA or even FIFA, a directive needs to be issued to officials to be stricter when it comes to punishing defenders who make late tackles attempting to pressure forwards getting shots away before more injuries like the one Isak just suffered happen again.