Apparently this article is almost 2 months old now (Jan 18, 2017) but i only just recently ran into it when I read the "propose questions for the Matt Doyle interview" thread. http://www.goal.com/en-us/news/67/w...-yellow-cards-and-the-five-craziest-potential It got me to thinking that these ideas are actually quite interesting: 1) Eliminate offsides (the "aussie rules" rule) 2) Institute a penalty box (the hockey rule) 3) Maximum penalties--"foul out" rule (the basketball rule) 4) Shootouts instead of free time + pk's to end a tied game ( we did it first in MLS!) 5) No time wasting near end of game --ball cannot be stationary for more than 10 secs I love aussie rules--and i think soccer could benefit from a no offsides rule to become a more open game. However the game would change fundamentally from the one we know now. I dont agree or disagree with a penalty box. I love hockey and i love soccer. I think it is debatable whether having a penalty box would result in less fouling. It might however result in approaching the game differently form a tactical point of view. Having "power plays" in soccer might result in more ugly bunkering per game. The foul out rule--this one is good. Not every infraction in soccer is a yellow card--and so we have players that excel in fouling. You know the type--the players that flirt all game long with a yellow--committing multiple fouls, always betting that their foul will not be hard enough to merit a card. How many times per game can a ref whistle the same guy and not give a yellow? Under this new proposed system there is a clear limit to how many fouls per game you can commit until you're thrown out. Shootouts--highly controversial, but when MLS did it in its early days i always loved it. The NHL has experimented with this on and off. It always makes for great drama. No time wasting---yes please. How many times near the end of a game do you run into nonsense such as player substitutions, fake injuries, running the ball to the top of the corner and then holding the ball stationary there, or my fave--a goalie bouncing the ball and taking forever to get play restarted? It's ridiculous. Get the game going or get punished with either a FK or PK.
I hate most of those propositions. Maybe penalty box for cynical, "professional" foul is ok. I'd like to see something with time wasting though. Maybe if the stretcher has to come out, then the player must sit out for five minutes instead of being immediately let back in. Maybe that can just apply in the last 20-30 minutes.
The time wasting thing is a must. Something has to be done about it. It is out of control. The no offside is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard. They cannot do it. It would completely transform soccer into a different sport and eliminate the midfield. It would become kick ball lobbing the ball into the box over and over. Don't have the link but a lower division tested this and it did not increase the scoring. Some tweaking of offside to give the offense more of an advantage would be ok IMO. Like if any part of your body is even with any part of the last defenders body then your are onside. Or no offside once the ball is possessed within 18 yards of goal.
For the most part, enforcing the existing rules would improve the game greatly, especially with regards to time-wasting.
I guess I'd have to watch a professional game where offsides wasn't applied to decide on this. I'm suspicious of rule changes like this that are supposed to increase offense. It's rule changes like this one that has alienated me from basketball. Defenses will always adjust. The stability of the game and the tactical cat and mouse that goes on within the parameters is a large part of the enjoyment. I reckon defensive teams will always get 11 men behind the ball, without offsides they'll have less incentive to push out and risk the space behind. I think a penalty box will actually increase thuggery, as players take the penalty knowing they can come back in. Fouling out is the one that I have the most sympathy for. I get tired of watching players - forwards in particular - get away with multiple offenses while other players get carded. Send them to the showers, but don't make the team play short. That would distinguish between a foul out and a red card offense. My guess is that this would eliminate yellow cards all together, it'd be foul out or a straight red. As long as the shootout doesn't come at the end of 90 I'm alright with it. I think we'd still have teams applying a strategies to get to the shootout - we did in MLS - just as they do now for the pks. I think it might be better to drop both teams to 9 men for the extra time. Aside from the issue of redrawing the field, they could just move the goals closer for each extra time period. Time wasting: 10 seconds seems fair. I don't think it should be applied to fouls. For throw-ins, corner/goal kicks, I think 10 seconds or it's a turnover would be fair.
Its called posession. Its oart of the game, what the hell is wrong with FIFA now? I rather have the cheating, money stealing bastards who keave the game as is, than squares trying to ruin the game. Dont try to fix something that isnt broken. MLS WAS HORRIBKE BACK IN THE DAY, why would they try to implement that garbage now? FIFA need to stick their heads iut their asses, and leave the beautiful game, beautiful. Dont ef it up!!
MLS never had a no offsides rule If MLS was horrible back in the day i would argue it was purely because of the talent level back then--offenses were weak and played either longball or kick-and run while defenses hacked all day long. The shootout in itself did not make early MLS a bad league.
I imagine you could still keep yellow cards for particularly egregious or reckless fouls--2 of those and you're out. While the foul out could be for gamelong accumulation of hacks and mistimed challenges.
Reading the views of Euro and Latino fans of the sport on Reddit, most are outright dismissive of any changes to the offsides rule and rightly so. It changes the sport drastically into something almost unrecogniseable. The sport's tactical/technical aspects have always held higher sway than pure athleticism (which is why I've often criticized the idea that the US' rise in the WC hierarchy relies on the nebulous athletes lost to other sports meme; it's about how we teach and learn the game, not who is playing it,... we already have great athletes on the field) but eliminating the offsides rule would immediately blow a huge hole in that and enable speed to dominate fare more than it currently does. However, most of them outright stated that they actually liked the idea of the run-up pks so long as it was only used for tiebreakers (the current form having never been loved) and might otherwise voice support if not for the idea having originated here in the US. They feel that implementing it, right or wrong, would lead to further "Americanization" of the sport in the future. Pairing this idea with other wonky ideas like eliminating offsides has done no service to what could have legitimately been an idea that could gain traction with the fans and become extremely popular. All they see now is a slippery slope. A good idea that could lead to a whole host of bad ones. For better or worse, they'd rather suffer the inefficiency of pks (which at least has history and tenure with the game) than risk subverting all of the sport's beauty through further rule changes which might follow.
Fouling out would be a good idea, as long as its just something like clarifying what counts as persistent infringement. x fouls=yellow, 2x=red. If they really wanted to go NBA on it, figure out how to factor in team fouls (which can also be the target of persistent infringement now). After some number of fouls, a yellow gets assigned to the captain or the unlucky last player or something like that. Shootouts are whatever, I don't see it making a big difference one way or another to the opinion of tiebreaking after 90 minutes. The enforcement of a time wasting rule like that sounds like a nightmare. Too many variables to account for for whether or not the 10 seconds should be applied. I do like the suggestion that an injured play be required to sit out 1 or 2 full minutes. Thats a much easier rule to enforce and, if the player is actually injured, shouldn't be that big of a deal for them to sit out that time. Why do we need a penalty box? there are already yellow cards and red cards. Just use them. Eliminating offsides I think sounds dumb. Its sometimes surprising to think how recent some major rules changes were (for example, substitutes are only 50ish years old), but eliminating offsides seems like a drastic change. I also suspect it would make game play much, much worse.
What's called possession? Time wasting? Yes, you can waste time by possessing the ball, but you can also waste time by feigning injury. That's not possession. That's being a douche.
1) Eliminate offsides (the "aussie rules" rule) An Aussie rules pitch can be 185 metres by 155 . No cramming 22 players into 110 x 75. 2) Institute a penalty box (the hockey rule) With a penalty box you'd end up with 11 x 8 and 10 x 9 and occasionally no goalkeeper for 5 minutes, which would make it impossible for any team to keep it's shape. Each game would be farcical, like hockey. 3) Maximum penalties--"foul out" rule (the basketball rule) It would be inconsistent. Some referees don't call fouls if teams retain possession. Others give free-kicks for the most minor offences. Soccer players know how to go down to get the call and teams an pressure the ref (not refs) into making decisions in their favor by vehemently arguing even when they know he's right, John Terry. 4) Shootouts instead of free time + pk's to end a tied game ( we did it first in MLS!) Sounds like fun but you could decide a game on who hit the woodwork the most times. 5) No time wasting near end of game --ball cannot be stationary for more than 10 secs. So you'd change the rules during a game and give a free-kick against a player who was legitimately in possession of the ball. Meanwhile it may take the losing team 10-20 seconds to get the ball and another 10 seconds to take a free-kick. And ball boys have a habit of disappearing towards the end of a game, or hanging onto the ball, if their team is winning. See below for extreme examples. I'd introduce an extra card for dissent and play acting. Let's call it a green card. 3 green = red card, 2 greens and a yellow = red card. Meanwhile: Two German fifth-tier clubs have contested a football match over 30 minutes without the use of the offside rule. Tennis Borussia hoped to win the match by completely abandoning the midfield, keeping one player in attack and defending around an imaginary circle ("like handball"). Hertha 03 wanted to use the space by pushing the full-backs high up the field, as has been popular in hockey since the offside rule was scrapped in 1998. Neither approach was highly successful, with Christoph Biermann of 11 Freunde telling Deutschlandfunk that "the game with offside is firmly established, and permanently worked in the head." Biermann, however, noted that the match was end-to-end rather than a tight midfield battle. Link. (the embedded video is all interviews and no actual play).
1. The offside rule that they should be copying is hockey's use of the "as long as some part of the player is touching the line, he's not offsides" rule--in other words, so long as the players toe is even with the defender at the time the ball is played, he shouldn't be counted offside. Would make the offside trap much more of a gamble than it currently is (wherein the player seemingly has to leave a gap in space between him the defender to avoid being called offside) without leaving the defense completely handcuffed. 2. I believe that a shootout should take place with the ball placed further back to better give goalies a chance at blocking the kick; a penalty kick should naturally favor the offensive team, but a shootout should be a true competition between the accuracy/power of the kicker and the skills/reflexes of the goalie, and not merely a matter of the keeper "guessing right."
Sure. Trial balloons like this are really more about moving the Overton window about what's conceivable in terms of rule changes than they are serious proposals. I'm convinced this is to lay the groundwork for what FIFA really wants: a game divided into 20 minute quarters instead of 45 minute halves that doubles the total time allotted to mid-game (commercial) breaks within the existing 2 hour broadcasting footprint. FIFA leadership needs to shore up the value of future broadcasting contracts if they want to keep living the high life. This has already been openly discussed for WC2022 with the lame-ass justification that "it's for the player's safety in the desert heat," as though FIFA had no other options but to hold the world cup outdoors in a Qatari summer. So while I'd LOVE to see rule changes that addressed persistent cynical hacking or eliminated kicks from the mark as a tiebreaker, I understand choosing gridlock over opening the door to commercially-motivated attacks on a defining characteristic of the sport: long periods of uninterrupted play.
Particularly with persistent infringement. Game after game you see guys fouling and fouling and fouling and at most he finally gets the referee in his face wagging his finger saying "No more of that". It's infuriating and you see it all the damn time. The rule is already there. Same with most of that stuff, like time wasting. There's nothing more that needs to be done besides figuring out how to give the official a backbone. As for offside, it's ruining the game I MO. The rule is there to prevent goal hanging, not save bad defenders with slow feet from the consequences of being six millimeters behind the big toe of a forward 35 yards from goal. The shootout? Personally I loved it but that's a matter of personal taste. But forget all of that; the one that makes me nuts, absolutely drives me up the wall, is the mass confrontation. The guy makes a call and gets six players yelling in his face. Incredible. I'd make it simple: if the captain has a question about a call, fine. Go and have a civil brief chat. Anybody else - ANYBODY else - who says one word or comes within five meters of.the referee gets sent off. Right now. Put a stop to it in a hurry. You want game flow? Nothing you can do that would contribute more towards that goal than.the elimination of these never ending group arguments over calls.
Just following up on Bill Archer's comment regarding fouls--This is where the foul out rule if implemented might help i think. Refs are afraid to implement the existing rules because they are so inflexible. 2 yellows= an expulsion. So now it becomes a matter of what fouls is merely a whistle and which is a yellow card offense. Too many refs are afraid of having a negative effect on gameplay so they let some players get away with murder. You know the type--the refs that come from the "if there's no blood nothing happened" school of reffing. We also get players who have mastered the art of the foul--fouling all game long betting their tiny hacks here and mistimed challenges there wont be hard enough to merit a yellow. A persistent infringement rule would help greatly. All right we understand not every foul is a yellow--but if you persist in these "minor hacks" all game long you will still be thrown out. 5 or 6 hacks per game should be more than enough for a safe zone. It would separate those who have come to play and happen to have incidental fouls during the run of gameplay from those who are goons and who have come merely to chop away all game long. By the way if they do implement a foul out rule, they should still keep the yellow card rule for fouls deemed by the ref to be reckless enough. So in my mind the way i see it: minor hacks all game long= foul out, reckless=yellow, dangerous or violent = straight red
Persistent infringement is the great flow breaker in the game right now. I was thinking of a separate system for that foul. 3 Persistent Infringements equals a yellow and vice versa; so six points and you hit the showers early. If you have two PI calls and get a yellow for anything else then you have to tread very carefully to avoid getting ejected.
While we're on it, let me bring up an old hobby horse: Any incident of shirt-pulling should get a straight red. I know it's not the easiest foul to call, but when it's evident, why not just eject the player? A mistimed challenge can be the natural, mistaken result of legitimate soccer play, but a tug on the shirt can't be anything other than deliberate cheating.
I'm not in favor of any rule that results in automatic cards or send-offs. It completely eliminates the element of judgement or subjectivity. The reason FIFA doesn't give a number in terms of persistent infringement is because not all fouls are created equally. If you put a hard number on it, a minor handball and an inadvertent tangle of legs carries the same weight as a mistimed tackle and a forearm catching an opponent's head on an aerial challenge. Plus, if you get to a stage of a match where a player's next foul is going to result in an automatic send-off, the referee is going to bend over backwards to not call anything, and that's going to result in much bigger problems than the one we're trying to correct. Here's a hypothetical: Steven Lenhart is one foul away from getting tossed. 1-1 game, late. There's a 50-50 ball with him challenging a center back about 30 yards away from goal. He gets a shoulder into his opponent, mostly from the side but slightly from behind -- the kind of play that normally results in a foul being called. Not a dirty play by any means, just playing hard, that sometimes is ruled legal and sometimes not. Now, all of a sudden, what would normally just be a routine foul becomes a situation where a referee either has to let it go and allow a controversial play to turn into a potentially deciding goal, or send a guy off for basically playing hard. Or better yet... his challenge is legal, but in the process, the ball bounces up and hits his forearm, which is away from his body. Completely inadvertent, but has to be called because he's got his arm out and he gains an advantage. Do we want to send guys off for that? And that's just off the top of my head. I've also stated many times that I'm against any rule that forces a player who's been injured to come off the field for any length of time. In addition to the fact that it will make skill players targets, it also punishes guys who legitimately get injured in ways such as getting the wind knocked out of them or getting racked while eliminating the element of toughness and stamina. And again, if a referee knows calling for the trainer will result in a temporary timeout, he'll wait as long as humanly possible before making that decision, which will actually slow the game down MORE.
I don't necessarily agree 100% with this. Especially in the 90s, the US teams tended to be mighty mites, with a bunch of short but really fast guys (i.e. Cobi Jones) surrounding a couple big, slow enforcers (i.e. Alexi Lalas). This was because at that time, soccer got the guys who were excellent athletes, but too deficient in one dimension to compete in other major sports. The nice thing about soccer is that it isn't quite as size dependent as football or basketball. It's only been in the last decade where we have seen guys who were starting to be more like other sports athletes. Hell, Michael Bradley's uncle played baseball, not soccer.
Pretty much agree with every word - foul-out rules are a bad idea because they'll inevitably result in a.) refs overlooking fouls so they don't have to eject players, or b.) players being tossed out of games over an accumulation of (subjective) petty infractions. Just close your eyes and you can already picture CONCACAF refs finding a million tiny reasons to turf Giovinco from a key match so they can collect the other half of their bribe. Only brought up shirt-pulling because it can't happen by accident or in the course of honest play, it isn't subjective, and it is only and purely a form of cheating. Obviously, an automatic ejection is extremely harsh, but I have a funny feeling that after a short period of time under the new rule, shirt-pulling would magically decrease by 98℅. (Can you tell I was a striker? )
One good standard for proposed rules: Do they use it in basketball? If so, kill it with fire. Probably the worst-officiated sport on the planet.