10 Rules Changes to Improve Football

[Stu]

Some canny ideas in here, agree wholeheartedly with 1, 2, 3 and 4. The others I'm not so sure about...

 

1 Scrap the away goals rule and penalty shoot-outs in two-legged games

 

The away goals rule was introduced to stop visiting teams playing negatively but, while this has been achieved, the progress made has been cancelled out because home sides play more negatively. Managers often speak of a goalless draw at home as a decent result, because it allows their team to advance with a score draw away from home.

 

Furthermore, second-leg matches are rendered stone dead when an away side moves one goal ahead on aggregate late in the 90 minutes having scored more away goals, because they will only fail if they concede twice in quick succession. Without the away goals rule the home side in this situation would need only to score once to draw level, thus creating more excitement.

 

If the scores are level after 120 minutes (irrespective of which team have scored the more away goals) then the away side in the second leg should advance because, over the course of the tie, they have played an extra 30 minutes away from home. A penalty shoot-out does at least, in theory, reward footballing ability (unlike the away goals rule) but it remains an unsatisfactory diversion from the real game.

 

2 Use goal difference before head-to-head records

 

When two or more group rivals finish level on points in the Champions League or European championship, they are divided first by head-to-head records, and only if those do not split them does goal difference over the whole group phase come into play.

 

In a European championship qualifier (unlike a World Cup qualifier, when goal difference holds sway) if England scrape past Andorra 2-0 they will be at no disadvantage in their battle to top their group with, say, Croatia if the latter beat Andorra 22-0. The head-to-head method is (a) unfair, (b) confusing (permutations towards the end of the qualifying phase are often too baffling to comprehend properly) and © discourages positive play. Apart from that it’s all right.

 

3 Introduce “celebration time” and remove punishments

 

Goal celebrations are part of the enjoyment of the game for players and spectators. If you see a goal scored on television, you don’t immediately look away because the play has stopped – your eyes remain glued to the screen to watch the gleeful reaction of the scorer and his team-mates.

 

Such expressions of joy reinforce the impression that the game is important and therefore worth watching. Why not allow the goalscoring team one minute to celebrate before they must return to the halfway line? The minute can be added on at the end. Removing a shirt is a harmless form of celebrating and should not earn a yellow card. Players should not be booked for hugging members of the crowd; in fact, in these days of players being increasingly isolated from fans, it should be cherished.

 

4 Book players for ANY dissent

 

People in the game claim constantly that it is a matter of human nature that players are unable stop themselves complaining if they feel an injustice has been committed.

 

This is obviously nonsense, as is shown in rugby and cricket, when the vast majority of players keep their thoughts to themselves. The Respect campaign, in which referees this season have booked players for strong dissent – very angry reactions to their decisions – is, inevitably, working well, with back-chat having noticeably declined, and will continue to do so as long as the officials stick to their guns.

 

The odd case of dissent will continue, particularly from players with anger-management issues, but generally players will stop the moment they realise that their previously normal behaviour in a match will bring dismissals and suspensions. But, while we’re at it, let’s introduce yellow cards for all dissent – even brief shows of irritation by the waving of arms – to remove a stain on the game visible in internationals games down to park football.

 

 

5 Scrap the rule that forces injured players to leave the pitch after receiving treatment before re-entering the field

 

This was introduced to stop players trying to waste time by feigning injury but, while it might indeed have reduced the number of occasions that trainers have come on to the pitch, it has penalised genuinely injured players.

 

These players, even when they have been readied for action by the trainer on the pitch, must walk to the sidelines and wait a few seconds to be summoned back into play by the referee, sometimes while a set-piece is taking place.

 

In fact, time is wasted under the present system because play is held up while the fit-again player trudges off pointlessly with his trainer (instead of the trainer just sprinting off on his own). In any case, the problem of players wasting time can be overcome simply by adding time at the end of a game, a facility that many referees are reluctant to use, which thus, of course, encourages time-wasting.

 

6 If a player falls to the ground and stays down apparently injured for, say, three seconds, the referee should stop the game immediately

 

This would save time since, in almost every case, another player (whether a team-mate of the injured player or an opponent) will kick the ball into touch deliberately to allow treatment to be administered.

 

At best, it takes about 10 seconds after the player has fallen for the ball to be kicked out; other times it might be 15 to 20 seconds of uncertainty as one team gesture to their opponents to kick the ball out and those opponents, hesitantly and reluctantly, agree.

 

Occasionally, when one team refuse to kick the ball out, it leads to furious arguments between the players about the morality of the situation. When play restarts with a throw-in, and the ball needs to be returned to the possession of the other team, yet more time is often wasted as a player kicks the ball deep towards the opposing corner flag and the goalkeeper, unchallenged, trots out to collect it and saunters back before launching his clearance. If a player is lying genuinely injured on the ground, his team should not be penalised by having to play with ten men. If the referee decides the player is feigning injury, he should be booked.

 

7 Players must retreat ten yards at a free kick within five seconds

 

Offending teams often amble away from the scene of the crime, buying themselves vital seconds and almost always without punishment – those players who do so should be booked. If the offence is within shooting distance and the offending team want to build a wall, fine, but they have five seconds to do so, rather than the unofficial 50 seconds or so at present, which includes an interrogation of the referee, a study of the standard of the grass in the immediate vicinity and a long consultation with the goalkeeper.

 

If five seconds isn’t enough time to prepare, then don’t commit the foul in the first place. The attacking side theoretically have the option of taking a quick free kick but this is normally denied them by their opponents crowding around the ball. A defending team being allowed to bring ten players behind the ball at their leisure is often unfair because the attacking team might have had only one or two defenders between them and the goalkeeper when the foul took place.

 

 

8 Dismiss goalkeepers for encroachment at a penalty

 

Deciding whether challenges are fair or foul is often so tricky that a consensus cannot be reached after repeated video viewings – was the tackle acceptable and, if not, was it deliberate? Such uncertainty disappears when assessing whether or not a goalkeeper deliberately advanced past his goal-line before a penalty kick was taken.

 

It must be assumed that a professional goalkeeper has the capability to balance on two legs, so any placing of his feet beyond the white line is cheating. This happens for the majority of penalties but is almost never punished. In an extreme, but by no means unique, case, the Azerbaijan goalkeeper playing against Wales at the weekend stood two yards off his line as a penalty was taken and his save was allowed to stand. The assistant linesman can easily spot such an infringement, so the threat of a red card would surely bring this cheating to an end.

 

9 Suspensions for an accumulation of non-bookable fouls conceded

 

Five yellow cards bring a suspension, and so should, say, 30 fouls that lead to a free kick but not a booking (you would discount a player’s fouls committed in a game when he was booked, since he might have received his yellow card because of persistent fouling, so he would already have been punished for those fouls).

 

This would weed out those “clever” players who halt attacks by impeding an opponent in such a subtle way that referee feels a booking would be too harsh.

 

10 Scrap offside

 

OK, admittedly I’m not completely convinced it would be an improvement, but let’s trial it in a few friendly games to find out.

 

For those who immediately say football would not work without offside, the response is: “Nor does the offside rule itself work.” This is not just a reference to arguments about when players are active or inactive – an issue which, incidentally, while complicated, is reasonably fair and only rarely applied wrongly.

 

The over-riding problem is that in a typical game there will be at least three or four incorrect offside calls because the assistant referee could not tell whether an attacker was behind the last defender when the pass was made him – and, indeed, the officials usually should not be criticised. It is so hard to decide close calls that a monkey with a flag would have the same success rate. In fact television commentators, when studying a replay, thus knowing which players to watch at the key moment and having the action slowed down – unlike the linesman, who needed to be looking at all the players at real speed – often still get it wrong.

 

These offside mistakes frequently lead to goals being wrongly awarded or chalked off, which brings at least some limited reaction (although how many people are aware that Wayne Rooney had a goal wrongly disallowed in Manchester United’s last league match against Portsmouth, for example?). But the routine errors, when a player is wrongly given as offside when clean through on the goalkeeper (linesmen tend to err on the side of the defending team when unsure), and thus had perhaps a 30-40 per cent chance of scoring, are almost completely disregarded. Yet this is not basketball, but football, which averages about 2.5 goals per game, so every goal has a good chance of changing the result. Effectively, several decisions per match, which could each have a huge bearing on the result, are a complete lottery

 

 

I think allowing a certain amount of time for goal-celebrating would be brilliant, perhaps return some of the entertainment and fun back to the game - no more 'illegal' issues against 

[Nobody]

Agree with the first three, fourth to a certain degree, the rest would do more bad than good IMO.

[Teasy]

Some of the worst idea's I've ever seen.

[Stu]

Some of the worst idea's I've ever seen.

 

Some of them are - accumulated fouls/bookings!? - but some would be practical and entertaining suggestions. FIFA and the FA, IFA, WFA, SFA would do well to consider some of them before the fun goes out of football completely

[John P]

Scrap offside? I hope this is some sort of sick joke?

[Guest gggg]

Anyone who wants to scrap offside obviously never played football at school.

[John P]

Strikers would just go and stand in front of the keeper, defenders would then go and mark these strikers, and the result would be a big mess of players in the goalmouth with the other team blasting the ball trying to find a way through, like indirect free kicks in the area

[SEMTEX]

Strikers would just go and stand in front of the keeper, defenders would then go and mark these strikers, and the result would be a big mess of players in the goalmouth with the other team blasting the ball trying to find a way through, like indirect free kicks in the area

 

Kevin Davies would never move.

[The College Dropout]

Some of the worst idea's I've ever seen.

[CPL]

Strikers would just go and stand in front of the keeper, defenders would then go and mark these strikers, and the result would be a big mess of players in the goalmouth with the other team blasting the ball trying to find a way through, like indirect free kicks in the area

 

Kevin Davies would never move.

 

mackems.gif mackems.gif

 

So true

[Shearer9]

Most of these are too extreme to be practical, but I've read before that the reason the shirt rule exists when scoring goals is that players were doing it, getting the liner tangled up in the shirt and then it would take 2 mins to sort out before play started again.  Surely they should be able to take the shirt off, just with the stipulation that they can't continue playing without it and that the referee can start play again in a timely manner. 

 

Away goals are also stupid, scrap them, keep penalty shootouts.

[Pokerprince2004]

1 rule i would like to see is that if play is stopped for an injured player then they have to be off the field for 5 minutes. This would stop all the feigning of injuries as the team would be down to 10 men for 5 mins. Nowt worse when chasing a game and faking injuries occurs every 2 mins it boils my piss

[Nobody]

1 rule i would like to see is that if play is stopped for an injured player then they have to be off the field for 5 minutes. This would stop all the feigning of injuries as the team would be down to 10 men for 5 mins. Nowt worse when chasing a game and faking injuries occurs every 2 mins it boils my piss

Agree.

[John P]

1 rule i would like to see is that if play is stopped for an injured player then they have to be off the field for 5 minutes. This would stop all the feigning of injuries as the team would be down to 10 men for 5 mins. Nowt worse when chasing a game and faking injuries occurs every 2 mins it boils my piss

Agree.

 

But then say that one of your centre halves gets genuinely injured with 5mins to go, your not allowed to bring him back on. Thats daft

[Aphrodite]

Agree with 2,3 and 4, the rest are quite poorly concieved IMO.

[ElDiablo]

Some of the worst idea's I've ever seen.

[Neil]

100000% agree with the celebration one. One of the most infuriatingly pathetic elements of football is that you can be booked for celebrating with fans, taking your shirt off, I mean seriously, what a joke.

 

So therefore, celebrating and dangerous challenge will more often than not = same punishment. Rubbish.

[Groo]

The ONLY way football will improve is for the football authorities to stamp some authority on the game.

 

That unfortunately will never happen as the 'bigger' clubs will never let it happen. The only way to save football is for rules and regulations to be made as law, that means intervention by the governments (this will never happen) a self government has proven not to work.

 

I'm talking of course of money, since the 80's, the shift in money towards the bigger clubs, through, less be honest, pure greed, has totally destroyed football as we all know it. It started by Man Utd's campaign to reserve all gate receipts (when gate receipts still mattered) for the home team. They wanted all the gate money as they had big crowds, the old rules of sharing gates 50% meant that their bigger gates guaranteed them more money over the course of the season, the 50% rule was a means of not letting teams go too far ahead.

 

The formation of the Premiership, based entirely on Sky's money and the pulling out of the football league was then the second killer step. The football league wanted to continue sharing the money more evenly, whereas the 'top' clubs wanted all the money, so here perversely the pie grew tenfold and the greedy 'top' clubs did not just enjoy the benefit of a larger pot, they took the pot!

 

Then the final nail in the coffin, the European cup, with the ironically named Champions league , they enforced changes through pressure to ensure that the top 4 teams could enter the 'Champions League', thus giving them an each way bet each year for further money.

 

With the new agreements in place and the Sky pot getting even bigger, what does this mean??

 

How much money per week does a player warrant, all that money seeping out of football!!  Only a small handful of clubs that can compete and these buying up all the top talent, in some cases not to play but to ensure they don't play against them (Chelsea in particular).

 

The only way to improve football is to start regressing, enforcing teams to have limits, in wages, in players.  Share the money more evenly top to bottom.

 

Football in Europe is going the way of 'Football' in the states, where only super clubs exist, the rest amateur local. At least in American Football they do have a lot of controls and I would love these controls to come part of our football.. Wage Caps, Money sharing, Owner vetting, etc.....

 

The fact is, now Man City have this billionaire, then that makes 5 teams who could get those top 4, if Man Utd, Arsenal or Liverpool fail to make the Champions League, then they could face serious financial problems, such as Leeds. I'm wondering will it take a few top name clubs to fold to highlight the folly of the current system.

 

Right now I prefer the lower leagues, as they have real football teams, real fans and real competition on the pitch (although the Championship could change over the next few years).

 

 

Football will not self heal, as greed has taken over, legislation is the only thing that could enforce them temper the current conditions, and sadly, that will never happen.

[Kaizero]

Only rule 2 and 3 makes any sense to me really, the rest could probably destroy the game as we know it today. And what the fuck is the writer on about with booting the offside rule? Was he high or something? It'd be like in grade school in gym when some kids would just walk up to the goal and the other kids would boot the ball as hard they could up to them. Games ended like, 20-18.

[9]

think 99% of the rules are fine, its the players that need to sort there selves out more than anything

[Exiled in Texas]

US highschool Soccer, who have their own set of modified rules, have a great Injury rule. 

 

"If one team is clearly in possession of the ball when the game is stopped for an injury, then they restart from the position of the ball, when the game was stopped, with an indirect Free dick. (If no team in possession then drop ball)"

 

This means that a team breaking up field or in on goal, when the game is stopped, gets the ball back in a similar position and with a similar advantage.  It stops the meaningless act of a drop ball giving possession back to the goalie of the team on the break when they had advantage way up field.

[Adam]

I would introduce roll on roll off subs, so you can come off then come back on after however long. Then bring in a third card, so you get a warning (yellow atm), then a sin bin card and finally a red card (serious offences etc). Works in rugby and other sports would work wonders in footy.

[Rob W]

1 Scrap the away goals rule and penalty shoot-outs in two-legged games

 

NO!  I can remember what it was like before it came in - 11 man defences away from home - it really was bloody awful

 

2 Use goal difference before head-to-head records

 

agreed

 

3 Introduce “celebration time” and remove punishments

 

Introduce a proper (NEUTRAL) time keeper with a klaxon - the ref can indicate "stop the clock" and "start the clock" but the time keeper wtaches the time

 

4 Book players for ANY dissent

 

Rugby Union & League have it right - only the Captain shopuld be allowed to approach the officials

 

 

5 Scrap the rule that forces injured players to leave the pitch after receiving treatment before re-entering the field

 

if there is no advantage to be gained by feigning injury (see timekeeper) then may be this would work

 

6 If a player falls to the ground and stays down apparently injured for, say, three seconds, the referee should stop the game immediately

 

don't think it would work but see above

 

7 Players must retreat ten yards at a free kick within five seconds

 

Agreed - a yellow card for not doing so

 

 

8 Dismiss goalkeepers for encroachment at a penalty

 

Agreed

 

9 Suspensions for an accumulation of non-bookable fouls conceded

 

Not necessary - you can be booked for "ungentlemany conduct" for a succesion of fouls - any way most refs have a quiet word and tell them "one more of any sort and your booked sonny"

 

10 Scrap offside

 

Tough one - you might finish up with two attackers and two defenders staying in the goal area all game............  I'd certainly go back to the old rule where if you're offside your'e offside and get rid of the "not interfering with the play"

 

One alternative might be to make it only operative beyond the line of the Penalty area......

 

 

 

[madras]

1,clubs cannot run up debt. they have to survive on what they have.

 

2, clubs have to name a 23 man squad which they can use through the season. at least 5 of which must have been in their academy.

 

3. booking for any dissent.

 

4 unless it is obvious that a player is seriuosly injured,play carries on and the physio can come on to treat the player who is classed as out of the game,as soon as he can he must leave the field of play and the ref waits till a breakdown in play to allow him back on.

 

5 timekeeping to be kept by an off the pitch official and displayed for all to see. this official will stop the clock whenever the ball is dead (as in basketball)

 

6 advantage to be played until the conclusion of a move and play can be brought back if advatagous to the team who were transgressed against. (rugby union style)

 

7. only the captain to talk to the referee.

 

8 special tv programme on a sunday highlighting those who cheated and calling them as such.

 

9 bring back standing terraces.

 

10 treat the obstruction rule as such when players are letting it roll out of play.

[Exiled in Texas]

I'd like to see an automatic yellow for any defending player struck by the ball at a free kick when they were within the 10 yards. Primarily aimed at stopping the defenders standing over the ball to allow their team time to retreat and get organised.  So many times you see the attackers wanting to take a wuick free kick with the defender standing over the ball preventing the quick kick...book 'em.

 

I know this was tried, and then removed, but I'd like to see dissent at stopages of play (i.e free kicks) penalised with a further 10 yards towards goal (or at least the option of taking the free kick at the point of the original foul or the place 10 yards closer - whichever is more benefitial to the team).