Tottenham and Ajax players will only be suspended for next month’s Champions League final if they are either sent off in tonight’s semi-final clash, or receive retrospective punishment.
The two sides meet in Amsterdam, with the Dutch outfit leading 1-0 from the first leg, and a place in the Madrid final against Liverpool up for grabs.
However, no player is left in the perilous position of being one booking away from missing the final.
Uefa changed their suspension rules at the start of the 2014-15 season to dictate that all yellow cards are wiped before the semi-final stage.
With three yellow cards in three different games needed to incur a suspension, it is now impossible to accrue a ban for the final based on bookings alone.
Prior to that change, there had been numerous instances of players missing the biggest game of their careers because of semi-final second-leg bookings.
Some of the most famous examples include Roy Keane and Paul Scholes missing Manchester United’s 1999 final and the case of Chelsea defender Branislav Ivanovic, who was unaware that he would be suspended for the 2012 final until he was told in a post-match television interview.
