FIFA has denied news about experiments with new rules. However I've been watching matches in the socalled "Future of Football Cup", in which precisely that what was denied, took place. https://www.kickoff.com/news/articl...ifa-s-five-shocking-new-rules-revealed/702477 FIFA's 5 shocking new rules revealed? Jul 19, 2021 - 10:42 am By Kyle Lewis World News FIFA are reportedly ready to change football as we know it with five shocking new rules, including 30-minute halves and five-minute sin bins for yellow cards. There are several new rules currently being trialled at a youth tournament called the Future of Football Cup, according to Mundo Deportivo. The youth teams of Dutch sides SC Heerenveen, AZ Alkmaar, PSV Eindhoven and Belgium's Club Brugge are competing in the competition.
Sounds like a continuation of the Fair Play initiative that was interrupted by COVID. These trial is three or four years old. Honestly I'm surprised to hear they're still testing the 60 minute thing. I thought it was done.
Why did you think the 60 minutes were done? Imterestingly this two halves of 30 real minutes thing are a physical challenge. Referees as well as the players were more or less gassed after each match.
Agreed. It’s a logistical nightmare. And does anyone thing your local league that wants to cram as many games as possible is going to realize a 60 min game with stopped clock is going to take far longer than a 60 min game with running clock? You 8:00 pm game is now 9:40. We don’t know what happened.
The same will happen at our local sports complexes as they do for basketball tournaments. They'll just put a running clock into the local rules of competition. I still don't think we'll see the "30 minute start/stop clock" in any major competitions unless FIFA pretty much writes new laws for the professional game compared to the grassroots game.
We've been part of an FA trial for sin bins in my league for the past 3 years - it has since been expanded to Supply leagues (maybe Contrib too?). It's only being used for dissent though, not all YCs. IMO, it works really well and has reduced the amount of dissent. As soon as a team gets a sin bin, the coaches are hot on their players to keep it shut, and I've been involved in a few games where a team leading have ended up going behind while they have a player in the sin bin. The only problems are it is still inconsistent in its use - some referees make much greater use of it than others who still prefer to manage wherever possible - it can get quite confusing with the whole list of permutations of sin bin YC, normal YCs, whether players are allowed to be substituted, etc, and I also don't like the fact dissent YCs are shown with a YC which is confusing for spectators, especially when they see the same player get two YCs but not shown a RC. A green card like in hockey would be better IMO. As much as I think it's a good idea and workable, I much prefered the rugby style trial several years ago where a FK was advanced 10 yards for dissent. As for the other proposed law changes, I can't see any of them making it much further any time soon. I've also done games with rolling subs, and it's really ruins the flow of games and can be easily manipulated to one teams advantage.
Specifically on the dissent angle, my position on these experiments has never changed. The problem with dealing with dissent is referees. We don't want to do it. We don't want to have 3-4 yellow cards for dissent in a 5-6 yellow card game. And we certainly don't want 3-4 yellow cards at a single stoppage when there is mass confrontation. So, at best, we punish the most egregious dissent and the dissent that cannot be managed. At worst, well, it gets pretty bad. But the bottom line is that referees are reluctant to give yellow cards, which do very little in game particularly when the match is already stopped (ignoring 2CTs and putting card accumulation on the back shelf for a moment). Tossing a yellow card to a player who has earned a dissent card truly does no harm irrespective of anything else; it's just the perception that we shy away from. So how will ramping up the consequences for a type of misconduct that we've conditioned ourselves to often ignore make it more likely that we will deal with it? If I am a referee who is reluctant to issue a mostly meaningless caution for dissent, why does IFAB or anyone else think I'm going to have a team play short for 5-10 minutes because of it? Or move a free kick 10 yards closer? I don't doubt it might "work" at more grassroots levels. But I can guarantee it won't work at the top levels. Can you imagine a CONCACAF or CONMEBOL referee doing this? I can't. And on top of the increased reluctance for referees to handle dissent because of the increased consequences, you also will be creating a system where there will be two subjective decisions for referees, rather than one. The first, of course, will be whether or not the act rises to the level of misconduct. But the second will be how bad the consequences are in context. Moving a DFK from the top of the center cirlce to the midfield stripe is one thing, but was that dissent really bad enough to warrant moving a free kick from 33 yards out to 23? And putting someone in the sin bin at 43' for mouthing off could work great. But would the same exact words and actions prompt you to have a team play down from 80' through full time in a tied match? Also, as I allude to above we don't punish mass dissent as is. So what happens when we do move a free kick 10 yards or put a team down a man? Every single player on that team will know we won't do it again for a little while. If we won't toss two potentially inconsequential yellow cards for dissent, we certainly aren't making a team play 9 v 11 for it. This will never work in our sport. There's a reason why rugby is a different sport. As for everything else, until something is trialed in a professional first division I'm of the opinion that all these articles are clickbait. It may be interesting to monitor and dissect some, as I just did above with the dissent provision. But none of this is actually on my radar until a league of financial consequence even contemplates trials.
Kinda like that silly idea of cautioning GKs on PK encroachment . . . did absolutely nothing to increase enforcement.
But we made the VAR enforce it. And it's an objective question. Two totally different things than what we're dealing with here. Still in the hands of referees. And one of the most subjective decisions in the game. It won't be the same.
I don't think its different at all. Originally they made it a mandatory caution and it was still entirely an on-field decision: increasing the sanction did absolutely nothing to make referees more likely to call it--if anything it made them more reluctant, which is the same thing that would happen with sin bins at the professional level. It was later that they added precision VAR review which is what changed behavior--imagine that: calling it was what changed behavior, not adding draconian punishment. IMO, the same is true for dissent: the way to change the culture is for refs to actually caution it. To paraphrase Donovan, players do it because it won't be called. You could change professional dissent to a red card and it wouldn't change anything because players know that refs aren't going to sanction it.
I think we're agreeing? I agree with you that the perceived problem could be solved if officials just called what they were supposed to call and used the tools at their disposable. When I say things are "totally different," I just mean that IFAB and FIFA made changes and introduced technology to force referees to make the call and use all tools at their disposal. Changing dissent to sin bins or 10-yard advancements doesn't do that, it just kicks the can down the road and gives referees a different, more severe, consequence to ignore.
I think @MassachusettsRef mentioned the stat from the Euros via Rosetti's press conference about an impressively high "ball in play" time during the Euros. I'm going to guess that number was lower in Copa America and the Gold Cup, but I think we've already started to see the impact of the 60 minute trial at the top level. Officials are more aware of how much time was being lost by the underdog delaying the game.
I used "work" in quotes for a reason. Cautioning dissent would also work just fine. I don't see the virtue in changing the game itself to address something that can already be addressed if people actually wanted to address it. Further, I was speaking specifically about the 10-yard advancement there. I actually don't think you can institute a 5-10 minute sin bin for grassroots football; the timekeeping alone feels like it would be a nightmare for 95%+ of matches. I'll let @Englishref speak for himself, but I suspect he's talking about a league with at least some institutional support for the technical areas (whether that is a fourth official or some type of home staff). I could be wrong, though. Either way, would be interesting to hear why and how he believes it has worked.
I'm pretty sure that sinbins are used at grassroots in England. IIRC, it is based on the level of the league.
The initial trial started off on a few leagues around the country - the one I officiated on is one with a referee and two ARs so no 4O. I think I'm right in saying it was also used in other more grassroots leagues with just a referee. It has since expanded to what we call supply leagues, which all have neutral ARs but no 4Os. I think most people thought keeping the time would be an issue, especially if you have more than one in the bin at the same time. However, I've never been in a game where that's been an issue. The issue comes more with coaches/players not understanding that it is 10 minutes of playing time. I don't think I've been involved in a game where more than one has been put in the bin either, as usually it's use is a significant deterrent to further shows of dissent. I mentioned earlier some of the potential drawbacks, but from my experience of being in a league that's used it for a few years, it has really cut down the amount of dissent that you get from players. As I said earlier, once one player gets a sin bin, coaches/players are much more proactive in preventing further dissent than the traditional YC. I think to begin with some referees were quite reticent to use it, but over time they've got much more used to it and use it far more freely. On my supply league it's faced a bit more resistance from referees so dissent hasn't been as reduced as it could have been, but I put this down more to the observation process at that level and the pressure on referees to do well in both club and observer marks for promotion, which is a shame as I think they're missing a trick. No idea how/if it'll work higher up as it's only gradually being rolled out so hasn't been trialled on any 'senior' league here yet, but just on my own personal experience I'm a fan. This was from The FA following the initial trial if you want more opinions, stats and survey feedback. And this has the graphic that shows the eight different permutations of the sin bin use that I think needs refining if possible if it goes forward.
One thing that appeared from Dutch tournement was that the kick in solved a few problems related to wasting time. Players use to protest with the ref about the throw in and thus delayed the actual throw. With the kick in that dissapeared as the team protesting very quick found out that the kicking in player was away before they could organize themselves while futile time wasting protesting at the ref. So it did cut down idle minutes and the ref very soon was freed from annoying players with futile protests. The coaches very quick learned that shit actually was working against them.
BTW from the Wenger offside rule change trials, this would now be onside which I think would change the game so much that the sport would barely be recognizable.
I just really don’t understand any of this. Offside with VAR works perfectly fine. It wasn’t until they wanted to start measuring it down to the nanometer that things got stupid. If you can’t see a clear and obvious error with the naked eye and video replay the call on the field stands. Simple as can be.
Not really. Every league except MLS has been using the lines. MLS is the outlier. Everyone else has been making millimeter decisions (with rare exception) since day one of VAR.