[REF WATCH] In the wake of the horrific foul by Birmingham defender Martin Taylor that shattered the leg of Arsenal's Eduardo, which earned Taylor a three-game suspension, FIFA president Sepp Blatter said that players guilty of deliberately dangerous tackles should be banned from the game.
"Dangerous tackling is one of the most important issues in soccer at the moment," Blatter said. "Players who do this kind of thing intentionally should be banned from the game."
Blatter called for stricter refereeing and implicated coaches.
"The mechanism where this happens today is obvious," he said. "The pressure on the coach or manager to win is such that he encourages his players to go for victory at any cost. There is no microphone in the locker room, so he says, 'Go, go, go'. Until when? Until the point where the referee intervenes.
"Some referees have in their mind, 'How long can I let the game go without giving a card?' They think they are good referees if the game flows for 20 minutes without an interruption. But the referees must give yellow cards or red cards in the first three or four minutes if necessary and we will call for them to do so. Then the referee will have peace on the field.
"At the moment it is just not working."
Blatter added: "Attacking somebody is criminal, whether it happens on a soccer field or elsewhere. It is a crime and should be treated as such."