Fixing Football

Football is such a fantastic sport, enjoyed by millions around the World, so why are the powers that be constantly tripping over themselves in an attempt to improve the game?

Let’s start at the head of the snake, Gianni Infantino; In this instance if you did remove the head of the snake, the body wouldn’t die, it might actually thrive.

His comments and conduct leading up to and during the 2022 World Cup in Qatar were erratic at best, and his latest trick has ensured Saudi Arabia as the sole bidder to host the 2034 World Cup. The man is clearly corrupt and prostituting FIFA to the highest bidder, irrespective of any human rights concerns, the sooner he is gone the better in my opinion.

Officiating, VAR & game structure.

VAR is such a huge mess at the moment. I’ll be completely open and honest upfront, I’m all for VAR, but I’m not 100% sure what the perfect version and application is for football. Procedural errors such as the Luis Diaz offside debacle during the Tottenham V Liverpool game could/should be avoided by using a little common sense. Hopefully this sort of error will never happen again.

Offsides should be easy to resolve. The introduction of the semi-automated technology would help Premier League officials, and speed up the review process, and the Diaz debacle would have been completely avoided if dialogue between on pitch officials and VAR could be heard by everyone. This one simple change would make VAR so much more palatable to all football fans.

Part of the frustration with VAR is often not knowing what the officials are looking for or at. When you watch a Rugby Union match, the VAR aspect is actually instructive. Not only do you understand why a review is taking place, but you are being educated in the process. If you’re a very knowledgeable fan, hopefully you won’t be as frustrated because you understand the rules and you’re also looking to assess the incident yourself, or if you’re new to a sport you are actually learning about the game and your appreciation of the game will be enhanced.

I really don’t understand why football doesn’t take some of the best bits from other sports and use them to enhance their own sport. If other sports have already trialled something (and made the mistakes for you), then why not embrace it? The decision makers within football often come across as old fashioned, pig headed or just stubborn because they won’t use a process already used by another sport first.

An official being surrounded by players after a decision is a too frequent sight, and has been for years. Rugby players understand you don’t do this, the Captain speaks to the referee, and rugby players treat their officials with respect, often referring to them as ‘Sir’. Football is so beyond this it’s embarrassing. We’ll get to the point where we don’t have enough officials at all levels of football because no-one wants to be verbally abused on a regular basis. Why give up your Sunday morning to officiate ‘The Duck & Moose’ vs ‘The Brace of Pheasants’ if you’re going to be chased around the pitch by 22 hungover mongrels and verbally abused for 90 minutes? It will continue to happen whilst top level referees are treated like this on an international stage, and it drip feeds down to the lower levels.

Time wasting, and feigning injury, could be eradicated almost instantly by introducing a stop clock instead of the traditional 90 minutes plus ‘injury time’. The sport of football does not benefit as a spectacle when players engage in theatrics, just to waste a precious few seconds. Whether it’s slowly taking a goal kick or throw in, or feigning injury so they can lay on the floor, or taking two minutes to walk off when substituted, it’s cheating the fans and your opponents. I’m sure there would be uproar if football changed to two halves of 30 mins with a stop clock in place, but I’ve seen reports of games where there has been less than 35 minutes of actual playing time in a 90 minute fixture. Use a stop clock, stop time wasting, and people will also stop complaining about 12 minutes of injury time because it will no longer be a thing.

There are so many other possible tweaks which can be made to enhance ‘The Beautiful Game’. Other sports such as cricket & NFL use limited challenges per team if you disagree with an officiating decision. That’s a possible alternative to players chasing the official and demanding a VAR review every time they think they deserve a penalty. I’ve read recent reports of ‘sin bins’ for fouls worse than a yellow but not quite a red. Sin bins are used in rugby and ice hockey and I don’t think they detract from the spectacle. The tactical yellow used so often by the likes of Rodri, Busquets, etc to stop an opposition counter attack before it gets going is often seen as clever play. It’s cheating, plain and simple, and players might think twice about it if the yellow card is accompanied by 10/15 minutes in the sin bin.

There are so many possible solutions out there, and I fully accept none of them are perfect, but I love football and I feel we’re heading nowhere fast at the moment.