How old are these kids? In norway we don't give out cards for 12 and younger. Instead any action that normally warrants a caution is rewarded with having to sit out the rest of the match while the team is allowed to play with a substitute.
U10 & below i dont carry cards. U12 & up i do. in ~12 yrs., hav issued 1 red in U12. eva. kid racked up 2 cautions in 5+ min. towards the end of the match where his team was up by several. coach was peeved. effect on game = basically nil.
Why not using cards? This is soccer, and dangerous play needs to get punished. He didn't even look back at the guy he kicked down. Serves him right. You make whimps and entitled jerks of those kids, if you don't use approbiate punishements. What do you want to to do? wave a finger at him, saying .. listen, you don't kick another player in the face, maybe kicking some teeth out, thats a no no. Now hop on and play.
Where the contact was really didn't matter. The clearly endangered the safety of the opponent. The big question for me is whether you should be using cards on kids this little for what I believe is a rec league. That's generally avoided if at all possible. In a competitive and/or older age group, that's red every day.
it didnt hit him though, if he actually did kick him in the face, then that would have been a clear red card, only thing that happened was them tripping eachother. also im fairly sure that his foot wasnt as close to his face as it looks in the video, just the cameera angle@@theslayer9845
You dont need contact to be a red, but without context of what happened up to this point in the game makes it difficult for us to know why the straight red was given. He could have already been warned about serious foul play and ref didnt want anyone to get injured. However, even though the ref has every right to pull the red, without any other info I would have given a yellow without contact and the age of the player.
