You get the referees you deserve

We can gnash and wail as much as we like about card-crazy officials such as Markus Merk, Graham Poll and Valentin Ivanov. After all, they're infuriating and we have to vent our spleen somehow. But the sad truth is that, like democratic people when it comes to governments, we get the referees we deserve. Yes, the reason Fifa wants to eradicate contact from football is because it's scared out of its wits of society's new string-pullers: lawyers.