Why can a two-footed tackle escape a red card under VAR?

What prompted this question?

ESPN has run a VAR review piece in which its resident referee, Andy Davies, explains how contentious decisions are reached. One of the incidents it covers is a two-footed tackle by Manchester United's Heaven that did not lead to a red card. The headline invites an obvious response: if two feet left the ground, surely that is a dismissal? This article argues that it is not that simple. To see why, you need two separate things: what the Laws of the Game say about the challenge, and what the Premier League allows the video assistant referee to do about it. Most of the anger after decisions like this comes from mixing the two up.

What does the law actually say about serious foul play?

The Laws of the Game, written by the International Football Association Board, define serious foul play as a tackle or challenge for the ball that endangers an opponent's safety or uses excessive force or brutality. The wording also covers a player who lunges at an opponent from the front, side or behind with one or both legs, if that lunge uses excessive force or puts the opponent in danger. What the law cares about is the effect and the risk of the action, not its shape. Using both legs is listed as one way of committing the offence, not as the offence itself. So the question a referee has to answer is not whether two feet were involved. It is whether the challenge crossed into danger.

Is a two-footed tackle automatically a red card?

No, though plenty of supporters assume it is. A player can go into a tackle with both feet and still be in control, low to the ground, and reaching mainly for the ball. A player can also commit a clear red-card offence with one leg, studs up, at speed. Two feet is a warning sign, because it usually means less control and more force. Referees are trained to see it as one factor that raises the risk, not as a verdict. That distinction annoys people, because a simple rule would be easier to apply and easier to defend. But a simple rule would also send off players for challenges that hurt nobody, and the law's authors chose not to write it that way.

What separates careless, reckless and excessive force?

The law has three levels for fouls in a challenge. A careless foul shows a lack of attention or caution, and the only punishment is a free kick or penalty. A reckless foul ignores the danger to the opponent or the consequences for them, and earns a caution. A foul with excessive force goes far beyond the force needed and endangers the opponent, and that means a sending-off. Most disputed two-footed tackles sit on the line between the second and third levels. Was it reckless, meaning a yellow card, or did it endanger safety, meaning a red? Judging that line is the whole difficulty. Two reasonable officials looking at the same footage can disagree, and the system is built to tolerate that kind of honest disagreement.

Which factors do referees weigh in a lunging challenge?

Officials are taught to break a challenge down into its parts:

• Speed and intensity: how fast and how hard the player went in.
• Studs: whether they were showing, and whether the leg was straight and locked or bent and giving.
• Point of contact: high on the shin or above the ankle counts for more than a glancing touch on the foot.
• Control: whether the tackler was off the ground and committed, or still balanced.
• Opportunity to pull out: whether the player had any chance to stop.

Making contact with the ball first does not excuse a dangerous follow-through. Making no contact at all does not cancel out the danger either, because the law punishes the risk created, not only the harm done.

When is VAR allowed to step in on a red card?

In the Premier League, the video assistant referee can only intervene in four situations that change a match: goals, penalty decisions, direct red cards, and cases of mistaken identity. A missed or wrongly given direct red is inside that scope. A second yellow card is not. Even when an incident is within scope, VAR does not re-referee it from scratch. It checks whether the on-field decision was a clear and obvious error. If it was, the VAR recommends an on-field review, and the referee goes to the pitchside monitor and makes the final call. If the VAR thinks the original decision was defensible, even if not the one it would have made, it stays silent and play goes on.

What does "clear and obvious error" mean in practice?

It means the VAR is not asking what the right decision was. It is asking whether the referee's decision can be supported at all. If the referee showed a yellow card, or no card, and the footage leaves room for that view, the threshold has not been met. This is the main reason fans are left baffled. A viewer at home may be sure a challenge was a red. The VAR may agree it could have been a red and still not intervene, because a caution was within the range of acceptable outcomes. The test is designed to keep the referee on the pitch as the main decision-maker, with the video assistant there as a safety net for clear mistakes, not as a second opinion.

Why does the Premier League set its threshold so high?

The reasoning is partly about the flow of the game and partly about authority. Frequent interventions mean long stoppages, and they turn every judgement call into a second referee's opinion. That weakens the official who actually saw the incident at full speed, from inside the game. A high bar keeps VAR for the cases where almost nobody would back the original call. The cost is that some debatable decisions stand when a lower threshold would have overturned them. That is a trade-off, and I think it is a reasonable one. It makes decisions more consistent with each other, because the VAR is checking the same question every time, even if that means some individual calls are ones a given viewer would not have made.

What is known about the challenge involving Heaven?

ESPN reports that the challenge was two-footed and that it did not result in a red card. Beyond that, the material available here does not give the speed of the tackle, the point of contact, whether studs were showing, or the card, if any, the referee showed. It also does not say what reasoning the officials gave, apart from what is in the ESPN analysis itself. Those are exactly the details the law turns on, so it would be wrong to say here whether the decision was correct. What can be said is that a two-footed tackle staying on the pitch is consistent with the law, as long as officials judged it reckless rather than dangerous, and the VAR judged that view defensible.

Does the slow-motion replay distort the picture?

It can, in both directions. Slow motion makes it easier to see where contact landed and whether studs were showing. It also stretches out the moment of contact, which can make an ordinary collision look violent, because the viewer sees the impact for much longer than it actually lasted. That is why officials are encouraged to look at incidents at normal speed as well, to judge intensity, and to use slow motion mainly to check the point of contact. Supporters usually see the slowest, most dramatic angle on a loop. That partly explains why the public's sense of what is obvious drifts so far from the official threshold. The footage that convinces a viewer is often not the footage the decision rests on.

What would make decisions like this easier to accept?

Leave the law alone and explain decisions better. The rule on serious foul play is sensible: it punishes danger, not technique. The VAR threshold has a coherent purpose. What weakens confidence is the gap between a decision and the public reasoning behind it. When supporters hear only that the check is complete, they are left to guess why. Explaining in plain terms which factors the officials weighed, and why the on-field view was judged defensible, would not settle every argument. It would move the argument onto the right question, which is whether the challenge endangered the opponent, and away from the less useful question of how many feet were involved.

Sources and further reading

• ESPN, VAR review feature with analysis by its resident referee
• International Football Association Board, Laws of the Game, Law 12 on fouls and misconduct
• Premier League, published guidance on how VAR operates in the competition
• Professional Game Match Officials Limited, material on referee training and VAR protocol