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If you were a football dictator, how would you change the game?

21st May, 2015
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The penalty shootout is a tragic way to lose a match. (AP Photo / Franz Mann)
Roar Guru
21st May, 2015
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1114 Reads

With the A-League grand final in the past and that other great competition the Eurovision Song contest front and centre in our thoughts, now seems like an opportune time to reflect on the basic tenets of our great game – the rules and regulations.

Anyone wanting the bring about a rule change in football faces an uphill battle. It’s no easy task to convince over 200 member nations representing about five billion people that the game they love should be changed.

Still, changes have happened. Way back at the very start the Blackheath club walked away from association football because the new body refused to allow hacking.

Rules relating to back-passes, the amount of time a goalkeeper can hang onto the ball, and changes to interpretations of the offside rule have generally sped up the game.

There have been some bizarre rules too. In a previous incarnation, American soccer invented a shootout system to resolve any drawn match. It involved a single attacker trying to dribble around the keeper from 35 yards out before the shot clock ran out.

As changing football rules by committee is so difficult I have declared myself as a dictator of football. In this capacity I would make the following changes to the game.

Bring back the golden goal
I must be in the minority because most people on football forums sneer at the golden goal rule to decide knockout matches. I don’t know why. There is something sensual about the match being decided by the climax of a sudden death-goal.

Without golden goals there is always the chance that the team who falls behind in extra-time can equalise and force the game into a penalty shootout.

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If both teams score an equal amount of goals in extra-time, say one match in every ten, then the golden goal rule reduces the amount of games decided by penalty shootouts by ten percent. Surely that’s a good thing right?

Loosen the nets
One of the great joys of football watching in the 70s and 80s was the sight of the ball literally bulging in the back of the net. Goal nets were loose and piled up like grandma’s curtains.

When a ball hit the back of the net it stayed there. There was always that lovely moment when a defender or goalkeeper would fight their way Frodo Baggins-like through the web of cordage to retrieve the ball.

Sometimes just to add to the humiliation of conceding the goal, the defender might get their boot caught in the net and require extricating by other red-faced defenders.

These days the nets are so tight that the ball rebounds like a cannon, placing attackers at risk of injury. Half the time I can’t tell if a goal was scored or not.

Loosen the ‘auld onion bags I say.

Time pieces
I have been watching some of the Stanley Cup and NBA playoffs. The Americans are precise when it comes to timing. In fact in the last minute of a game they even keep count of tenths of seconds. Everyone in the stadium and millions more watching on TV can tell exactly how long there is to go.

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Not so in football. Around the 44th minute mark of the half, the fourth official picks the electronic board and half-heartedly punches in a two or a three depending on his mood. With all the modern goal-line technology you would think football authorities could introduce precise electronic clocks in the stadiums so we know exactly how long there is left.

Dawdling substitutes
Don’t you just hate it near the end of a game when the coach makes a substitution and the player dawdles off like he is out for a promenade on St Kilda beach.

Admittedly if it’s a Sydney FC player I don’t have a problem with it, but if it’s the other team it makes my blood boil. Why can’t they jog off like they did in my junior days?

To fix this problem I would give the referee the power to dish out a yellow card to the player being replaced. Or maybe using the old “sins of the fathers” maxim (currently applied when the nearest player in a defensive wall cops a yellow) the substitute could be given the yellow card as soon as he steps on the field.

Better still the referee could be equipped with one of those electric cattle prods.

Imagine this exchange:
– Mr Janko are you taking your time to leave the field?
– Ja!
– Well cop this – bzzzzzzz
– Aaaagh!
– That’ll learn ya

So that’s what I would change. There are some other issues that you may consider:
The use of technology for offsides
Retrospective yellow cards for simulation
Score 1 point for missing a goal (hey that’s already been done)
Larger goals to produce higher scoring matches. No joke, this was suggested by none other than Pele some years back
Reintroduce hacking

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If granted supreme power, what changes would you make?

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