Blatter says board must rule on dangerous tackles

By Mike Collett

LONDON (Reuters) - FIFA president Sepp Blatter wants football's law-making body to consider banning players guilty of dangerous tackles and has urged coaches and referees to help clean up the game.

Blatter made the comments in an interview with The Times on Friday before Saturday's annual meeting of the International Football Association Board (IFAB), the sport's ultimate law-making body, at Gleneagles in Scotland.

The board will also consider an experiment using two assistant referees, discuss goal-line technology and consider a proposal to standardise the size of pitches used for international matches.

Blatter is keen that the board should take a strong stand on the increasing number of dangerous tackles which have blighted the game in recent months.

The issue was brought into sharp focus in the Premier League last month when Arsenal's Croatia striker Eduardo da Silva suffered a bad leg break and ankle dislocation in a game against Birmingham City. Birmingham's Martin Taylor, who was sent off, later apologised, saying it was an accident.

Blatter told The Times: "Dangerous tackling is one of the most important issues in football at the moment. Players who do this kind of thing intentionally should be banned from the game.

"This is a matter we will discuss this weekend," he said. "We will not only make recommendations to the referees, we will instruct them to be stronger against this violence."

Blatter said the problem used to be tackling from behind but now players were making dangerous challenges from the front and side.