Hopes were high four years ago that the final of the 2010 World Cup would deliver a classic contest.

The tournament itself had not been hailed as the best, but it started brightly with the opening goal by a South African with a spectacular, sing-along name, Siphiwe Tshabalala, it impressed and surprised in patches, and it headed towards a mouth-watering conclusion with that rarest of events — a competitive and enjoyable third-place play-off.

With the presence of Holland and Spain guaranteeing a new name on the World Cup roll of honour, both line-ups studded with stars from the global game, we sat back and waited to be entertained.

But the man of the match was the referee, Howard Webb. A policeman from the steel town of Rotherham, he was an easy target for critics who accused him of being officious and harsh. Maybe Fifa agreed because the leniency shown by match officials in this tournament suggests that those who run the game have developed something of a blood lust.

This year’s World Cup has not been short on the physical side of the game, yet the number of cards brandished by referees is at the lowest level since the tournament expanded to 32 teams in 1998. In France, there were 250 yellow cards and that figure increased to 284 in Japan and South Korea, peaking at 345 in Germany and dropping to 241 in South Africa.

Those 2006 and 2010 competitions featured some freak matches in the shape of Portugal and Holland, which produced 16 yellow cards and four reds in Nuremberg, and Webb’s final four years ago, in which Spain received five yellows and the Dutch nine, including a second for John Heitinga.

This year there have been 178 yellow cards and ten reds, so it will take monumental levels of ill discipline and the sort of crackdown completely out of character with the rest of this tournament for the remaining two games to take the total anywhere near the level of recent years.

Errors and omissions by officials have been largely overlooked, as spectators and the media have concentrated on the high quality of the action, but some media reports in the build-up to the first match referred to Sepp Blatter considering the idea of allowing each coach a fixed number of tennis-style challenges, and it is not difficult to see where they might have been used.

Croatia would have been tempted in the first match, when the softest of penalties gave Brazil the chance to take a 2-1 lead. Iran would have invited review of their penalty call against Argentina, which was turned down with the game goalless at the time.

Portugal might have struggled to make a case for Pepe staying on the field against Germany, but could have used video to highlight the excessive overreaction of Thomas Müller. The host nation would have risen as one to use TV to condemn Juan Zúñiga for the challenge that sidelined Neymar.

But at the same time, it seems clear that a policy of leniency by match officials is driven by Fifa’s desire to avoid the suspension of players when it comes to the big matches. Wiping the slate clean after the quarter-finals ensures that only the most severe offences in the semi-final would result in a player being banned from the showpiece.

Maybe it is time for Fifa to rethink. With teams facing six matches to get to the final weekend, it may be better to have one amnesty after the group matches and another after the semi-finals. Players would therefore be under pressure to behave throughout the tournament, but unlikely to miss the final unless guilty of extreme offences.

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Toothless officials: Undoubtedly the biggest miss was the offence that led to the biggest ban. Match officials did not see Luis Suárez sink his teeth into Giorgio Chiellini, so they could not do anything about it.

Maxi madness: Uruguay had also left a stain on the tournament in their opening match, with Maxi Pereira kicking out aggressively at Joel Campbell, of Costa Rica, to collect the first red card of this World Cup.

Table toppers: Costa Rica have collected the most yellow cards so far, with two of their 12 going to Oscar Duarte in the match against Greece. But Brazil, with 11, and Holland, with nine, could still overtake them.

Busy Ben: Australian referee Ben Williams has been the busiest official, dishing out 15 yellow cards including Duarte’s double. His dismissal of Belgium’s Steven Defour against South Korea makes him the only referee to have shown the red card more than once.

Earliest bath: Pepe’s was the earliest dismissal in a match, but, with Portugal already 2–0 down against Germany when he walked after 37 minutes it cannot be said to have affected the result.

Bad boys on the bench: Liassine Cadamuro, of Algeria, was booked in the closing minutes of the draw with Russia for kicking the ball away. Oscar Grandos, of Costa Rica, was booked on the bench during the match against Greece and the Uruguay captain Diego Lugano also managed to collect a yellow against Colombia, even though he was injured and not officially a substitute.

Phil Ascough, the author of Never Mind The Penalties — The Ultimate World Cup Quiz Book (foreword by Kevin Kilbane) and Never Mind The Tigers, both published by The History Press, was a senior reporter and sub-editor at The Royal Gazette from 1989 to 1992