Devastating Aston Villa injury proves referees are too lenient on cynical fouls

It was confirmed on Friday that injured Aston Villa midfielder Boubacar Kamara will miss the rest of the 2025-26 season after undergoing knee surgery.

Villa are in the midst of a very particular kind of injury crisis. Other Premier League teams have many more players out of action, not least Crystal Palace and Everton who both took points from recent matches against Villa with depleted teams, but Villa’s are concentrated in one position.

As we await confirmation of the severity of the injury suffered against the Toffees by captain John McGinn, Villa must also do without Ross Barkley for a few more weeks. Both Youri Tielemans and Amadou Onana have been sidelined at times this season, but it’s the loss of Kamara that’s really ripping the guts out of Villa’s middle.

Boubacar Kamara confirms his season is over

“Hey guys, just a quick message to thank you all for the support since I left the pitch,” Kamara posted on Instagram.

“It’s been difficult to accept it, especially with the team’s results, my recent form and what’s coming up in the next months. Good luck to the lads until the end of the season, keep pushing.”

It was the news Villa didn’t need. Kamara is one of their best players, possibly the best, and arguably the most important. The France international would get into any team in the division and Emery must now do without him with three objectives still to play for this season.

It’s a devastating loss and the real tragedy is that it was so utterly avoidable.

Football is too lenient on ‘cynical’ fouls

Kamara was injured in the FA Cup game at Tottenham Hotspur, fouled by João Palhinha as he carried the ball out of defence and looked to drive through midfield in the first few minutes of the match.

It’s easy for Villa supporters to put the focus entirely on Palhinha, not least because of how he conducted himself throughout and beyond the rest of the match, but the truth is that Kamara was injured by a foul that happens all the time without injury. Let’s not pretend otherwise.

That’s not to say it was an acceptable tackle, just to take in the full picture and acknowledge that football, its officials and its lawmakers are also culpable when one of these tackles does result in a serious injury.

Cynical fouls happen in every game. Referees are directed to issue yellow cards for them but, really, they’re considered part of the game. Palhinha wasn’t booked but most players in most matches are, and that’s all built in to the game plan.

Manchester City have been doing it systematically for years. Arsenal do it. Villa do it when they need to. Spurs do it when they know they can’t compete. Everyone’s at it because it’s useful and it’s almost always worth the price of a booking. That’s the calculation they make.

But Palhinha’s foul on Kamara serves as a reminder that a yellow card for the culprit isn’t the only cost. Players can and do get injured, sometimes badly, by so-called tactical fouls.

IFAB needs to step up and protect players

There are degrees to it, of course. A tap on the heels is much less likely to cause an injury than knee-on-knee contact or a two-footed tackle, but football shouldn’t be so forgiving of a practice that puts players at risk when it’s deliberate ten times out of ten.

Its impact can and should be limited but it’s not going to happen by self-policing.

Referees need to be more proactive in the way they deal with tactical and cynical fouls. Villa know to their cost that some of these trips and tackles don’t even draw cautions. This one didn’t.

That’s part of the calculation too, especially early in the game, and one has to believe it’s possible that a more consistent approach in years gone by might have persuaded Palhinha not to foul Kamara within minutes of kick-off.

Football’s laws are the domain of the International Football Association Board, or IFAB. Referees can only give a free kick and a yellow card for this type of foul until the representatives of FIFA and the football associations of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland on IFAB gets serious.

It’s not an easy situation to resolve – upgrading tactical fouls to an automatic red card is very probably too severe – but we owe it to players to pay closer attention. Deliberate, cynical fouls that spoil the game are bad enough. Allowing players to get hurt as a consequence should be ample cause for reflection.

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