THE FA may have done everything by the rule book when it comes to ‘dealing’ with Ashley Barnes’ terrible challenge on Nemanja Matic, but as the authors of that book, they need to think seriously about a re-write.

The general consensus among former professionals is that Burnley striker Barnes knew exactly what he was doing when he followed through on Matic at the weekend. At best, he didn’t do enough to prevent the contact happening. Either way, Matic was lucky not to end up with a broken leg.

Surely these are the sort of challenges that the FA should be looking to clamp down on – but they chose not to take any retrospective action against Barnes. Quite frankly, it’s utterly ridiculous.

The FA’s reasoning behind not taking any action against Barnes stems from the fact that referee Martin Atkinson saw the foul.

You can’t argue with that. He even awarded a free-kick. The fact that he failed to produce even a yellow card for what could have been a career-ending challenge therefore cannot be questioned.

My question is simple. Why ever not?

The referee bleated on about avoiding re-refereeing games during a series of Tweets sent out when they announced that Barnes would not be punished.

To an extent, they are right. If every challenge in every game was scrutinised using video evidence, it could result in a whole different set of issues. It would probably make referees more cautious when handing out red cards, knowing that the panel would punish the player if video evidence made it obvious that they should have been sent off.

The problem is that we already have re-refereeing of games. If a referee doesn’t see an offence, a player can still be punished retrospectively.

Chelsea’s Diego Costa is the most recent player to fall victim to this, receiving a three-match ban for stamping on Emre Can during the League Cup semi-final against Liverpool.

This is where I get a bit confused. If you look at the video of that incident, the players are battling for the ball. I really don’t understand how the referee in that game can claim not to have seen the incident.

He may not have seen it as a stamp, so they’ll be no record of that in his report, but then Atkinson didn’t recognise Barnes’ challenge as a potential leg-breaker. What’s the difference?

So what should happen? Well, I think that videos of games should be sent to the respective referees on Monday. They should watch them back and see if there are any incidents that they may have missed that need to be looked at again.

That way, the re-refereeing would be done, initially at least, by the referee who officiated the game in the first place. Surely that’s the way to go.

The point has been made that none of the Chelsea players responded angrily to the challenge. It’s a fair point, and in real-time it wasn’t easy to see exactly what had happened – so let’s give the referees a second chance.

It would be even better if matters like this could be sorted out at the time, but that would involve managers’ challenges and instant replays. While I think that’s a road that football should and will go down, it’s a way off yet.

It’s hard not to feel a bit sorry for Matic, who misses this weekend’s League Cup final after getting sent off for his angry reaction to the tackle, but no matter what, the FA could not condone his push on Barnes.

In hindsight, I’m sure Matic will be thinking that a much better response would have been to stay down and pretend there was a chance that his leg might be broken. Sadly, it looks like that would have been the only way to try and ensure that Barnes got his just desserts.

Time to accept that the World Cup cannot always take place in June

LEAGUES across Europe are in uproar at FIFA’s decision to hold the 2022 World Cup in November – but it’s the right decision.

Putting aside all of the other issues surrounding holding a World Cup in Qatar, and don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of them, there really was no other option.

The Qatari delegation probably misled FIFA with their talk of air conditioned stadiums, but if we want the World Cup to be held all over the globe, we need to accept that sometimes it will not be able to take place in June.

Having a ‘summer’ World Cup as a pre-requisite would mean that many countries would be ruled out of hosting. In India, for example, June is monsoon season in many areas.

The question is this. Do we want everyone to have the opportunity to host the World Cup or do we want it to remain the preserve of mainly Europe and South America?

If we want the tournament to tour the globe, the major European leagues will have to be a bit more flexible.