Soccer (Closing)

It also actually immediately punishes the team making the infraction. Right now, the only downside to a first yellow card in the 88th minute is a potential for a suspension later down the road. It doesn’t actively hurt your team during that game unless you do something else in the next 5 minutes. Now players committing dissent would actively be hurting their team and players would be incentivized to self police their teammates rather than further the pile on knowing the ref won’t book 5 players at once.