But that's my point exactly. Imagine the following situation: you're the referee of the world cup finals, 60 minutes left in the game, a key player of a team clearly fakes an injury and they already have a yellow card from before. What do you do? Let the harmless violation pass and silently approve of faking injuries, or punish the player harshly and potentially decide the result of the game there? With stakes this high, I bet you feel the pressure to let it go.

If you say you would give the red card, what if it wasn't an obvious faking of an injury? The problem clearly is that you can't give a slap on the wrist penalty, it's all or nothing.