I RECENTLY received a newspaper cutting from David Downs, the Reading FC historian, that had no connection with the club.

It was about an incident in a French Ligue 1 game.

The headline was ‘Ruse of the Day’. By co-incidence, two days later I received a video of the actual incident but with a more caustic headline – ‘Most Ridiculous Yellow Card Ever’.

So what was this ruse that evoked such a label?

The video showed Paris-Saint-Germain player Marco Verratti going down on his hands and knees to head the ball along the ground back to his goalkeeper.

The referee stopped play, awarded an indirect free-kick to the opposing team and then showed Verratti a yellow card for unsporting behaviour.

The referee was probably aware he would face abuse, but in fact his decision was correct.

The Laws of the Game has a list of incidents which are covered under Unsporting Behaviour, and it includes ‘using a deliberate trick to pass the ball, including from a free kick, to the goalkeeper with the head, chest, knee etc, to circumvent the laws, whether or not the goalkeeper touches the ball with his hands’.

This clause was introduced the year after the law change which made it an offence for a goalkeeper to touch the ball with his hands, if it had been deliberately kicked to him by a team mate.

The idea of the change was to speed up the game, get the ball back in play as soon as possible and, of course, the goalkeeper cannot be challenged by an opponent once he has the ball in his hands.

That first season after the change, some clever players were flicking the ball up with their foot and then heading it back to the goalkeeper.

This was considered by the International FA Board to be a trick to circumvent the Law and so brought in this new clause.

Deliberately going down to the ground to head the ball comes under this same ruling.