This absurd rule must be abolished immediately! Bayern Munich's "undeserved" yellow cards for Joshua Kimmich and Michael Olise should be a wake-up call for UEFA.

What's so annoying is that it would be so easy to prevent Kimmich and Olise from even getting into a position where they have to act on the football pitch. UEFA should drastically change its regulations regarding yellow card suspensions in its international cup competitions. There is actually nothing to be said against abolishing them completely, but a compromise could be made initially, for example, by stipulating that anyone who receives six yellow cards in the first ten games of a Champions League season will be suspended for one match. And that would be it.

It would be more consistent to do away with them altogether. Fortunately, a compromise has already been reached for years when it comes to yellow card suspensions in finals. Remember the 2012 Champions League final, when three regular players from FC Bayern (Holger Badstuber, David Alaba and Luiz Gustavo) and FC Chelsea (Raul Meireles, Branislav Ivanovic and Ramires) had to watch the world's biggest club football match from the sidelines because they had received too many yellow cards in the competition beforehand.

"That can't be in the spirit of football," complained Joachim Löw, then coach of the German national team. And Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, then CEO of Bayern Munich, called for a rethink by UEFA, which eventually came.

Fortunately, it would no longer be possible today to miss a Champions League final due to a yellow card suspension, as all yellow cards are deleted after the quarter-finals of the Champions League. However, we should now go one step further and eliminate yellow card suspensions altogether, or at least make them very unlikely. Instead, we should limit ourselves to the consequences of a warning for the game in question: a player who receives a yellow card must ultimately be careful not to be warned a second time in subsequent challenges and then be sent off with a yellow-red card. That should be restriction enough!

The increasingly crowded fixture list – especially for top teams that go far in the Champions League – is another argument in favour of abolishing or adjusting yellow card suspensions. The addition of yellow card suspensions to injury-related absences or red card suspensions should be avoided at all costs. And in this respect, too, it would be absolutely in the interests of football.

And then there are the two explicit cases from Tuesday evening in Bergamo. At the latest after Olise scored to make it 5-0 in the 64th minute, effectively deciding the tie after the first third of the 180 minutes, the focus shifted away from the football and towards the question: How would Olise, Kimmich and Dayot Upamecano manage to pick up their third yellow card in the current competition and thus miss the now pretty meaningless second leg against Atalanta and not one of the big games against Real or City?

Among the Prime TV experts and world champions Mats Hummels and Christoph Kramer, the final phase was dominated by the excitement of whether Upamecano would also manage to pick up the coveted suspension. The Frenchman ultimately "failed", while referee Espen Eskas took pity on Olise in the 77th minute when he took an irritatingly long time to take a corner kick.

Kimmich's redemption was much more turbulent. In the 83rd minute, the midfielder refused to take a free kick and pretended to search in vain for a passing option. As Eskas, who was of course aware of the situation, hesitated for a long time before giving in, Atalanta's Yunus Musah beat him to it, ran furiously towards Kimmich and bumped into him. It was understandable that Musah, who also received a yellow card, may have perceived Kimmich's endless waiting with clear ulterior motives as a lack of respect. And although it is understandable that Kimmich and Olise behaved in this way, from Atalanta's perspective it does indeed show a lack of sportsmanship in a way. It is all the more annoying that UEFA imposed the guidelines for their actions.

What made the situation even more absurd was that after the final whistle, Kimmich couldn't even stand by his actions and explain them with a wink, but had to dictate an obviously prepared statement into the microphone with a straight face. "It was unnecessary. I was looking for a suitable passing option. You don't want to play into the press. The opponent left Tom (Bischof) a bit free. I had the feeling they were only leaving him free so they could press," said the Bayern star on Prime.

The background: Kimmich and all other Bayern officials were not allowed to admit that they had deliberately picked up yellow cards. In 2019, UEFA suspended then-Real Madrid defender Sergio Ramos for two matches after he hinted that he had deliberately picked up his third yellow card shortly before the end of the 2-1 victory in the Champions League round of 16 first leg at Ajax Amsterdam. The move backfired twice: Ramos was too confident that Real would advance to the quarter-finals and therefore preferred to miss the return leg against Ajax due to suspension. But not only was he exposed and suspended for two games, the Madrid team also lost the return leg at home 4-1 without him and were eliminated.

That will certainly not happen to Bayern without Kimmich and Olise next week against Atalanta after their outstanding 6-1 away win. And it would be a farce on the part of UEFA if it actually came to the point where it treated the Bayern stars in the same way it did Ramos at the time, possibly ensuring that two of the best FCB players are forced to watch from the sidelines in a quarter-final clash against Real or City. Instead, it is imperative to address the rule that made the cabinet of curiosities attractive to Kimmich and Olise in the first place.

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