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Ignore the haters; football is going nowhere. It is getting a bit stale, though. Here are some fixes to make football even greater
If you are resistant to change and love football the way it is, then click away now. In this article, the aim is to do exactly what it says on the tin: fix the world’s most popular sport.
Sure, football has mostly existed in its current guise for more than a century. However, there have been numerous revisions that have undoubtedly improved the sport: changes to the offside law, the backpass rule, the outlawing of the tackle from behind, etc.
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The point is that change is always resisted initially; all of these changes were bemoaned as portending the death of football in some form, but they have culminated in an improved, engaging product. So, let us keep an open mind.
Without further ado, here are seven rule changes to fix football. For ease, I have put them in two broad categories.
Penalty reform
In general, penalties are ridiculously weighted in favour of the taker. The idea, in theory, of awarding a penalty is that you are punishing the defending team for denying the attacking team a goalscoring opportunity (we will get to that), but the punishment does not fit the crime at all. To address this imbalance, here are some suggestions.
Outlaw stuttering, 'hop' run-ups and disallow penalty rebounds
These two are grouped because they stem from the same fundamental issue: goalkeepers are at a big enough disadvantage as is without kneecapping them further. They already have to keep one foot on the line in the instant when the ball is struck, so why complicate their lives further by allowing the takers to effectively dummy before the kick.
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Of course, dummying is illegal, but players have circumvented this rule by altering their run-ups, seeking to elicit a reaction from the goalkeeper before they strike by hopping or stuttering. If a 74 per cent chance of scoring a goal is not enough to give a professional footballer confidence in his own technique, then that is no one’s problem but his own.
Similarly, it should not be allowed for the taker (or anyone else, for that matter) to get a second bite at the cherry having missed. Again, the goalkeeper has overcome painful odds and unhelpful rules to pull off a save. Why should his effort be negated by the taker, or a different player, getting another hit while he is still prone? Already, rebounds are not allowed during shoot-outs; that should also be the case during normal time as well. As a bonus, it would solve the problem of encroachment, eliminating the need for a rule that is, at best, enforced haphazardly.
Raise the threshold for penalties – both foul type and position
This is perhaps the most radical departure of all. Penalties are too easy to win: a player going absolutely nowhere can gain his team a near-unmissable shot by simply flicking the ball against an opponent’s arm.
There is also the nonsense of unnatural positions, a situation wherein footballers are punished for not tucking their arms behind their backs. Never mind that this is a posture no human being adopts while engaging in any sort of physical activity.
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That barely even scratches the surface of everything that is wrong with the current system, and this column is far from the first to raise this concern. So, what to do about it?
Well, how about we make it so that only infractions that take place inside the six-yard box, prevent an attempt on goal or obstruct a pass/run that would have led to an attempt on goal (inside the opposing half) get penalised with a penalty award? If, for instance, a player is clean through on goal and gets tackled, his team gets a penalty as long the foul took place in the opposing half. Any other foul anywhere else on the pitch should be given as a free kick.
While we're at it, make every handball outside of that six-yard box a free-kick. No natural or unnatural positions; if the ball hits your hand, a free kick is awarded against your team. We cannot judge intent short of mind-reading anyway, so let us take the subjectivity out of it completely.
Will this lead to fewer goals? Maybe. More goals? Who knows? But the upside is the near-elimination of simulation and handball contention. I would argue, and hear me out here, that when it comes to sporting competition, fairness should be a greater consideration than goals.
If you win the penalty, you have to take it
What is the point of this? Well, it would not only even out the odds a little bit more, but it would address the subject of “stat-padding” (an annoying social media term, but it cuts to the heart of something important).
As we have established, every time a team is awarded a penalty kick, they are more or less being awarded a goal by default. This should not be the case. However, by allowing them the opportunity to select their best taker, the rules are being gamed even further. The fact of winning a penalty should not allow the attacking team carte blanche to stack the deck.
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We already have this in basketball: if you win an offensive foul, you have to take the free throw(s). That seems a fair way, and also shares the goals around. What's not to like?
Officiating reform
Get sin bins in
The call for orange cards is nothing new. For the longest time, football commentators have been obsessed with figuring out a way to punish fouls that sit between yellow and red card territory. Yellow cards exist as a punishment; by definition, players should not be pleased to have been booked.
The solution, as I see it, is to introduce a sin bin. For cynical fouls (stopping a counter-attack, going in without intent to play the ball, etc.), the player gets sent to the bin for 15 minutes, during which his team is forced to play a man light. After that period, the player can re-enter the pitch, and is not allowed to commit another foul of any kind for the rest of the duration.
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If the cynical foul takes place with fewer than 15 minutes to end the game, the time suspension is carried over to the next game; his team can elect to replace him, but that replacement can only take effect after the remaining time has elapsed.
For instance, if a player receives an orange card in the 85th minute, and three minutes of added time are played, he will have served eight minutes by the end of that game. As a result, his team will play the opening seven minutes of the following game a man light, after which they can either bring that particular player back on or they can replace him.
Keep World Cup time-keeping system
It was all rather strange to see copious amounts of stoppage time being added on after matches in Qatar, but it made a ton more sense than officials playing it by ear and coming up with random numbers.
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Time wasting is a pandemic in football, and while there is nothing wrong with the weaker team in a tie seeking to slow the tempo of the game down, they should not be allowed to determine the actual parameters of the football match itself. Qatar 2022, in that respect, was an absolute win.
With VAR on board, it’s time to mic up the referees
Two things are unavoidably true.
- Whether we like it or not, video assisted refereeing (VAR) is here to stay
- VAR has a lot of benefits, but also a lot of problems
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It is not enough to label those who have issues with VAR “conspiracy theorists”; we need to acknowledge their concerns and seek to address them. Perhaps the best way to do this would be to make the communications between the referees audible.
Again, this is far from novel or original. Not only has this clamour been around for as long as VAR has been a thing, but the Australia football League (AFL) already does this. More than half the issues people have with VAR would be assuaged by more transparency from the officials, especially for fans in the stadium. They often have no idea what is going on and what the rationale is for certain decisions, and their confusion is fertile ground for suspicion.
TV fans have it a little better, but only by virtue of replays and the commentators hazarding guesses as to the rationale.
Let offsides be judged by feet, and only count beyond the 18-yard line
So, we already talked about only awarding penalties for fouls inside the six yard box. That would mean essentially getting rid of the 18-yard box from a function perspective. That is perfectly fine: erase it altogether and instead replace it with an 18-yard line. The purpose of that line will be offside adjudication: you can only be offside if you are within 18 yards of the opposing goal.
The effect of this will be to increase the effective playing area, opening up more space in midfield and allowing for greater flow to the football.
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And while we are on the subject of offsides, let us go one better and make it so that offsides are only judged by foot position. At the moment, we have the bizarre sleeve line situation; it now seems that we have gone away completely from the spirit of the law, which was to disallow goal-hanging.
In athletics sprints, the starting blocks are placed on a line and so the sprinters are judged to be starting from the same point; it matters little that one runner, by virtue of being taller than another, is actually closer to the finish line. Why can we not do the same for football?
- The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Pulse Sports
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