International call-ups...

Really? Standard practice to ban players for swearing at a ref, and generally the insults stack, so two insults is double the ban, etc.

 

My teammate was banned for the season for swearing at officials. There is no tolerance for it.

How many cases have you found of players swearing at refs and getting away with it? The bans are rare because players don't do it, because they know the consequences.

 

If my computer wasn't having issues I'd load up the rules to quote, but if you accuse the ref of cheating, swear at him, threaten him, etc. it's MEANT to result in a suspension, with each separate comment stacking. Has happened a few times in my local comp, and it was drilled into us when being trained. If professional refs tend to overlook it in the heat of the moment, then that's a bit different but at a guess I would say that there is a distinction between something like "You can't be ****ing serious" and "**** you you dirty ****". From my understanding what Messi said was along the lines of the latter.

 

Swearing at a ref is a straight red card.

Again. There's a distinction between swearing at a ref and swearing in general.

 

.

 

Simply not true hey?


As I suspected, most refs don't deal with it because they don't think it's worth it.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/football...-are-turning-a-blind-eye-to-abusive-language/

 

FFS you said that it's simply not true that that's the rule. It is the ****ing rule. The article you posted saying it was against the laws of the game is laughable. I actually gave players too much benefit of the doubt in assuming most didn't do it, but it seems refs get more tolerant the further up the chain. Hugely disappointing.

I said that when it is reported players are suspended as standard practice at all levels of the game, but I suspect refs don't see much point in going through the hassle. As a quick search proved.

Law 12 of the Laws of the Game is incredibly clear, I don't know how much more 'standard practice' you can get than being in black and white in the rules.

 

Ffs

 

I think my mistake was to say it was standard practice at all levels of the game, I was speaking with my ref's hat on and what I do in that situation. So I was wrong to apply that and assume it was a standard practice at the professional level of the game.

As I can't think of many example where I've seen a player swear AT a ref - as in, insulting the ref - I just assumed it was a rare occurrence in the PL. The fact remains the law is the law.

As an aside, not every discussion/debate about things on here needs to descend to swearing and snide comments, I was quite happy to discuss this rationally.

 

Didn't Deano once get a 6 match ban when playing for Aberdeen? Pretty sure part of that was for abusing the ref but agree, any sort of sending off or ban is relatively unprecedented

 

Is that when Deano got sent off then confronted the ref after the game in the car park ?

I'm not even sure what you could say to a linesman to get a 4 match ban