The red card is a totally broken concept. Totally broken.
I have to disagree. The red card rule is fine, though referees' opinions on what is a card-worthy offence have been slowly trending towards making football a non-contact sport in recent years, and this I also am not keen on.
Watching DC United vs. Dallas right now. A Dallas man achieved the rare feat of two yellows -- 1 red -- in the first half. So DC United has now gotten two goals and lead it despite being the lesser team for sure.
That's football. If it were a frequent thing for the worse team to constantly win then there would be a problem, but it doesn't happen like that. The fact that chance occurences can cause the weaker team to sneak a win is one of the reasons football is the greatest sport in the world. It's the sport which you can never predict with 100% confidence.
The punishment this rule levies is far, far beyond the fouls committed. The red card needs to be fixed. DC United just scored again 3-1 now.
The game DESERVES to be played 11 on 11. I don't understand why they don't take a page from American sports and allow for one guy to be tossed but for another player to be brought on in his stead. There's a number of ways they can do this. They could have it where you can only replace a red carded man if you have a substitution still available.
Or they could have it where you get an automatic substitution if the person sent off is sent off for 2 yellow cards but keep the red card as a very, very rarely seen nuclear option kept for situations where its obvious one team deserves to be hugely punished -- like when a player commits a foul so heinous it seriously injures an opposing player.
Admittedly referees make too much of some fouls, but the solution is for FIFA to encourage a more physical game, not to entirely remove red cards. Football does not "deserve" to be played 11 v 11. Yes, 99% of the time it
should be 11 v 11, but there are absolutely times when it should not - such as when players are too aggressive, or commit blatant infringements of the rules.
The idea of allowing other players to come on in place of the red-carded player may very well work in American sports, and perhaps for the MLS it would have the desired effect because of the culture of sports you have over there. Everywhere else in the world, though, it would be a disaster. Sadly, football is not the gentlemen's game of 100 years ago, and it is now a very cynical game. Some teams already practice a very questionable policy of encouraging players to hack down opposition players with the intent not to seriously injure them but to either force the player off with a minor injury or at least make them scared to commit to actions where they can be tackled and injured. The red card "nuclear option" is important for giving the referee a discourse to threaten players with for if they are acting like punishment is an acceptable outcome. Allowing red-carded players to be subbed - even with the "only if you have subs left" option - will just encourage some desperate teams to throw on expendable players at the start of the game for one purpose - to injure their "target" player, and then be replaced by a player who will actually benefit their own team.
Or take for example the 2010 World Cup, where Luis Suarez deliberately hand-balled the ball on the line to prevent a goal, and his goalkeeper promptly saved the penalty, meaning the only punishment Uruguay suffered was losing a man - right at the very end, when it was too late to matter. You could tell from Suarez' reaction, both at the time and later on in interviews, that he doesn't just not regret his actions, he is actively proud of himself for doing it. He revels in the fact that he cheated his team to victory. Ghana were furious - livid, even - that he was able to get away with it, but that was a quirk of the system. However, removing the threat of having your team reduced to 10 men for a red would make this style of cheating rampant, because it virtually eliminates any penalty the guilty team may suffer.
Even in situations where the team is not going out with the stated intention to foul their way to victory, if you do get players being stretchered off with serious injuries - and things like leg breaks are hardly uncommon in football - then if you allow the red-carded player to be replaced with another then you're actually ending up with a situation where the fouled team suffers just as bad a turn of events as the opposition - both lose a player and have to bring on a sub to replace them. If the injured player happens to be the star of his team, and the red-carded player is just a workhorse player, then the fouled team will end up being worse off for the deal, and would rightly question which team is being punished more.
Sure, I'm not saying that cynical tactics or aggressive play will affect 100% of games if this happens, but still, the point is that the red card is supposed to be there to serve as a warning to players: if you try to break the rules, it's not just you who will suffer, your team will too. If you just make it a player punishment then you're actively encouraging a "OK, I'll take one for the team" mentality.
You see some big games where some times some very, very hard fouls go without being yellow/red carded because you know they dare not ruin the game with a red card. The 2010 World Cup final comes to mind. I know they've been talking about fixing it but the remedies I've heard are far more dumb than they need be.
I think I must have misread this part as it doesn't seem to be in keeping with the rest of your argument. You're arguing that red cards should be taken out of the game, or at least have their punishment changed to an enforced substitution. It would be my impression that you would/should actively encourage games where the referee does not want to flash the red, or even the yellow, as it keeps the game squarely at 11 players apiece. However, your comment here seems to criticise particularly the 2010 World Cup final, where admittedly Nigel de Jong was incredibly lucky not to see red for what was, let's face it, a kung fu kick. Surely you should be praising that game for being a good example of the referee keeping the teams level? I don't quite understand your point in this paragraph.
Incidentally, you might be interested in the - admittedly very contentious, and broadly (but by no means unanimously) unpopular - proposals in Europe to replace the permanent sending-off of a red card with a rugby-inspired (but also ice hockey-like) "sin bin" idea, where players are sent off only for 5-10 minute stretches. They've been rejected every time they've been raised, but the idea does keep coming back:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/25718565