How Not to Fix Soccer
freedom-to-tinker.com
freedom-to-tinker.com
Most Americans have no problems with soccer as a recreational sport. However, from our perspective, there are major problems with it as it currently exists as a spectator sport.
All American spectator sports are extremely fine tuned affairs. Every American sport's officiating body does a complete post-mortem of every single call in every single game and annotates them extensively. This information is used to educate individual referees and to supply information to rules committees for possible future fine tuning of the rules. At the minimum, the rules committees issue an objective and annotated series of"points of emphasis" each year for officials so they can call the game in a fairer manner.
In every American sport, unsportsmanlike conduct is dealt with in the harshest manner possible. It is not uncommon for an unsportsmanlike foul to be undetected during the game but later caught by the reviewing body during the post-mortem analysis. You will often see $10,000, $50,000, or $100,000 fines to the players and even suspensions if the infraction is deemed worthy enough.
As I see it, there are several particularly glaring problems with international soccer:
1. There is no post-mortem review process that has teeth. If the Ivory coast player that was involved in that incredibly unsportsmanlike dive was retroactively red-carded (i.e. suspended) and the team's country fined, then it would provide a disincentive for this kind of behavior.
2. Officiating standards are laughable. There is an unacceptably large amount of variation between referees regarding what is and is not legal play. This makes it very difficult for teams to plan matchups and it condemns every game to a lengthy "feeling-out process" where, by trial and error, the sides determine the refereeing standards. This is not to say that there is no room for subjectivity; what I'm saying is that you have effective anarchy right now and it's a turnoff for American viewers.
3. Post-mortem review should also revert suspect yellows and reds. What good does it do for the game to have Kaka out for the Brazil / Portugal match? Nothing. In fact, it actively harms the game.
4. Offsides should always be "tie goes to the offense". There is no compelling reason to blow extremely close plays dead because the offensive player just might have been offsides by 6 inches. FIFA should issue a "point of emphasis" stating that "ties go to the offense".
5. There needs to be more than one referee. The article makes bogus points about "scaling down". You already have linesmen and a 4th ref that does nothing but hold up a substitution sign and do paperwork. There should be at least one and preferably two more referees so that the on-field officials have multiple views. One referee should be a head referee (as is already done), and the others subject to overrule.
6. Referees should train as groups and speak a common language. This is even more important for an international world championship event. This is just common sense.
7. Referees should be required to make distinguishing hand signals for each call. This would greatly aid the players, the fans, and the commentators in determining exactly what the ruling was.
8. For minor fouls in the box on set pieces, there should be discretionary power to the referee to retake or reverse the direction of the kick instead of either calling a game altering PK or doing nothing (and thus providing an incentive for questionable behavior in the box). There's simply insufficient granularity there. Minor defensive holding should generate a warning and another kick from the same spot for another scoring chance (but at a much lower scoring percentage than PK).
10. If a player leaves the field of play for an injury, or is down for more than 1 minute, the player should not be able to return for 5 minutes. This would provide a disincentive for players to fake injury.
Football is a gentlemans sport, played by hooligans. I suspect thats why the refs don't take a very central place in the sports administrative structure.
(though for the record post-mortems, referee training etc. are good ideas)
Referees should be required to make distinguishing hand signals for each call. This would greatly aid the players, the fans, and the commentators in determining exactly what the ruling was.
This is the case - hand signals are pretty conclusive in Football (and relatively simple).
Offsides should always be "tie goes to the offense".
Ouch, no. You'd see far too many goals scored like this; in fact from my observation the way it comes out if "tie could go both ways" - which makes it all the more fun/difficult to play. And more importantly keeps it relatively fair. I dislike sports that are "binary" - i.e. if it's A it's A. In football sometimes it is A but the ref calls B.
For minor fouls in the box on set pieces, there should be discretionary power to the referee to retake or reverse the direction of the kick instead of either calling a game altering PK or doing nothing (and thus providing an incentive for questionable behavior in the box). There's simply insufficient granularity there. Minor defensive holding should generate a warning and another kick from the same spot for another scoring chance (but at a much lower scoring percentage than PK).
See this is what frustrates me about US sports... it starts to get complicated. There is no need to introduce this complexity because the game is already well defined and correctly played in this area.
If a player leaves the field of play for an injury, or is down for more than 1 minute, the player should not be able to return for 5 minutes.
This just demonstrates, IMO, a misunderstanding of the game. 5 minutes may be no time in, say, American Football. In Football the game could be entirely changed in 5 minutes.
I think the biggest problem is that compared to many US sports Football is an extremely fast moving game that relies on being able to run smoothly and cohesively. For example if the ball goes out of bounds it could easily be thrown back in within just a few seconds and the momentum of the game continues (for me this is what I enjoy most).
There is, obviously, a culture difference. I think that is why I find US sports quite boring and unwatchable and some Americans want to change/slow/formalise football. I think... each to our own thank you :)
In my mind football is a perfect spectator sport because of the "flaws" introduced by human error. They make a game less predictable, more excruciating, provide human emotion etc.
(although I do think the current crop of players are a bunch of spoiled brats and need to be reminded of the real game)
5 minutes is too long though; a minute maybe (and even then nothing formally timed etc.)
Anyone faking an injury on my pitch used to get a red card for conduct detrimental to the game. So I consider 5 minutes to be very generous. I'm aware that it's quite a long time. That's the point. Provide a disincentive.
You cite the example of quickly throwing the ball back in. Yet average high school matches get a replacement ball to the thrower quicker than at the World Cup. Worse, everyone seems to be OK with having the thrower creep down the field for 10 yards until throwing it with all kinds of crazy side spin on it.
To most of us, you seem like the abused who now sympathizes with the abuser. You want egregious human error unjustly changing match outcomes? You want to continue to foster an ethic of diving and unsportsmanship?
To reduce this aspect of the game, you've got to provide disincentives. The key is to pick disincentives that do not change the fundamental "flow" of the sport. It's really very simple. I expect that at some point in the next 50 years, there will be some leagues that tinker with the rules, become immensely popular, and people will forget the current dark ages of corruption, incompetence, and unsportsmanlike, disgraceful on-pitch behavior.
No; and in fairness this is the only legitimate criticism I can accept about the game.
It's a new thing as well and entirely to do with the players and their ethos rather than the rules of the game. It's a catch 22 - sacrifice the spirit of the game to enforce fair play or keep the spirit and try to mitigate the diving etc.
Honestly; I don't think it is so bad as to warrant changes. Perhaps at the highest level of the game (though the world cup hasn't been too bad) but below that (club level outside of the premiership) it is pretty ok.
throwing it with all kinds of crazy side spin on it.
What's wrong with that? (I dislike the creep... agreed).
Yet average high school matches get a replacement ball to the thrower quicker than at the World Cup.
Citation? But also this proves the point somewhat - even the World Cup I disapprove of this whole "chuck em a new ball" philosophy. That is taking away from the game (where you should be running to grab the ball and get it back on the pitch ASAP). Modern football is having the urgency sapped by new ideas and rules like this. :P
I'm not saying the game is perfect; just that, well, Football is a game designed for Europeans to enjoy and some of that is stuff Americans don't seem to enjoy. Whilst I appreciate the suggestions we still enjoy the game very much - and would prefer for it not be changed to suit the American market (develop a break off game, certainly!). In the same way people would get pretty annoyed if I started making suggestions about how much Baseball could be improved :P
We each have our cultural games.
Now it's "holds the ball with both hands", which allows for spin, but it's still seen as bad form in some circles.
Sorry, this is flat-out dangerous.
You are not 100% certain who is really injured and who is not faking, and you are incentivising players who may not be sure whether or not they are injured to play on.
I agree with your other 9 points, though.
If you want to overcome the "sport for pussies" stigma that American Football players love to attach to soccer, there's got to be some tough love, at least in the USA.
Not exactly vanishingly. My over-30 team used to lose several people per season to knee injuries.
Being a man down for 5 minutes in American Football is a far far bigger disadvantage than being a man down for 5 minutes in soccer. In football it is not uncommon for a team to be a man down for half the game or more and still manage to win or at least hold on for a draw, I seriously doubt that could happen in American Football.
1,3. is already true. There is post-morten review, we do see red-cards being cancelled and players being suspended all the time.
4. It is like this already. FIFA rules says that "when in doubt, favor the offense".
5. There has been some national championships with 2 field referees, it didn't noticeably improve the quality of the calls. FIFA allows rule experimentation from time to time on national fields. We've seen "blue cards" (where players must be replaced by others) for instance, two referees, etc... sometimes those rules end up in the official set: referees telling how many extra minutes of play was one of those experiments.
6. They do. English is spoken among all referees in a world cup game, except when all referees share the same nationality.
7. There are recognizable hand signals for all calls, but not for all rationales which would be impossible.
8. I have no clue what you mean by this suggestion. Just wanted to point out that it includes "discretionary power to the referee" while rule 2 suggested that this is "anarchy".
9. What happened to rule 9? Well, I want to use this opportunity to make a point that your comment (as most of comments suggesting new rules) seems to be sincerely trying to create a better game. But this game is just not soccer.
10. Players are not allowed to return immediately and they do must wait for the referees approval.
As far as multiple referees goes, it's simply a matter of having greater field coverage in the area of view. It also reduces referee fatigue. It's a no-brainer and is the norm for just about every other sport on Earth.
Let me ask: what was the call in the US / Slovenia game? Nobody knows except for one guy. I was stumped. The commentators were stumped. The players didn't even know. There was no signal whatsoever, and it's not even required.
In fact, you actually can signal just about everything: pushing, holding, dangerous challenge, tripping, elbowing, and unsportsmanlike. Pretty much everything can be summed up as one of these with a simple hand signal.
Your point about the difference between "discretionary power" and "anarchy" is disingenuous. One would expect an officiating body for the world championship for a sport to have at least a reasonable consensus on what constitutes fouls and caution-worthy offenses. Do you think that the German team deserved 5 or 6 yellows and a red from that Spanish ref? I don't think so, and most people did not.
Sports evolve. You can either embrace it or fear it.
It's obvious that sports evolve. I think my overall feeling about this is that soccer IS evolving. Just not in that particular direction you and many others seem to want (i.e., more clear less-subjective rules, cameras, etc...).
The reasons some people hate certain aspects are the same reasons why most love it. Football has it's faults but many of them are the reasons why it's so exciting. Referees can ruin the game and we all know it, but standarizing every aspect of the game (the American way) it's not the method the current majority of fans would like to see.
Football evolves. Remember the golden goal? The silver goal? FIFA takes actions and football constantly changes. If it doesn't change in favor of your way, it doesn't mean it went wrong. Football is very unpredictable and I think FIFA takes care to leave it that way. F.ex. the golden goal was also meant to make the extra time even more unpredictable, but resulted a very defensive game, so they cancelled it.
"All American spectator sports are extremely fine tuned affairs."
Christ, I know. Have you seen the NFL rulebook that changes every year on substantive matters (like the definition of a "completed pass" whether or not you're pushed out of bounds)? It's horribly overcomplicated. The NBA's rules change nearly as much. At some point during the 90's, zone defenses were illegal. And even now, fouls under the basket are ruled based upon what side of a line you're standing on.
"Officiating standards are laughable. There is an unacceptably large amount of variation between referees regarding what is and is not legal play."
Oh, you mean like the strike zone in baseball?
"Offsides should always be "tie goes to the offense". There is no compelling reason to blow extremely close plays dead because the offensive player just might have been offsides by 6 inches. FIFA should issue a "point of emphasis" stating that "ties go to the offense"."
"Ties go to the runner" isn't even a rule in baseball. The offsides rule is one of the better governed parts of the game, there being a dedicated linesman and all. It's extremely rare to see an offsides call be wrong.
"There needs to be more than one referee."
I would not be opposed to having a fifth video referee.
"Referees should train as groups and speak a common language. This is even more important for an international world championship event. This is just common sense."
As I recall, World Cup referees are all required to speak English.
"Referees should be required to make distinguishing hand signals for each call. This would greatly aid the players, the fans, and the commentators in determining exactly what the ruling was."
I've seen a lot of soccer, and this generally isn't a problem at all.
however, wish I could have given you a -4 for your account name :)
Also, the rules are different anyways. At the FIFA level, games are played on large fields for 2x45 minutes, there are 4 refs, etc. AFAIR HS level games were 2x30 minutes and we were lucky to have 1 ref, and so on. So the rules are already different at different levels, and people can deal with it.
Would it really kill soccer if we had video replay? Match outcomes are routinely altered by erroneous ref. decisions, decisions which the whole world except the ref. knows are erroneous because we see the 1000FPS close up 30 seconds later. It's become so nonsensical that at the recent Brazil game, the brazilian players after a bad ref. decision to send off Kaka with a red card were begging the ref. to look up on the stadion screen to see the replay which clearly showed nothing happened, but he couldn't be bothered.
I think everybody would be able to accept that at High School level games there's no video replay, and the ref. makes mistakes, while rejoicing that World Cup level games are not influenced by bad decisions avoidable just by having a 5th ref. look at the replays.
This would also move the game towards actual fair play in the sense that players wouldn't be constantly diving, lying about who touched the ball last, lying about what happened, lying to convince the ref.
alternatively, basketball has so many rules that it prevents first timers from truly picking up the game at all... ie. a non-intuitive game
> Would it really kill soccer if we had video replay?
Has the lack of video replays killed soccer? Why stop at video replays at all? why not have a group of referees sitting in the comfort of an airconditioned room with muliple camera angles available to them making decisions about the game which are displayed on the screen?
would this kill the game? it is debatable. But would this significantly change the game? yes.... would I want to play in such a game? maybe not..
Also, it has a noticably negative effect at the kids playing at the amateur level. At one of the World Cup games the commentator noted that he teaches his young kid that diving/cheating is part of soccer and it's important to be good at it. Sports are supposed to be a part of life where cheating and lying is discouraged and outlawed.
You make a good point.. there are negative effects of the current state. I'm not too sure that having video replays would address it effectively though. In reality, the number of video replays would probably have to be artificially limited (ie. 3 per team etc). So this might just fuel a diving culture where teams dive so much to get the other team to use up their video replays. i'm not saying that it might turn out this way, but i guess it can still go both ways.
Regardless, the commentator ought to be shot =)
Yes. Alot. Injuries already interrupt the flow of the game - and one thing Football is good at is flowing (one reason I personally enjoy it).
A good game is non-stop action (which is my only criticism of US sports - I usually get bored waiting for baseball for example :))
Match outcomes are routinely altered by erroneous ref. decisions, decisions which the whole world except the ref. knows are erroneous because we see the 1000FPS close up 30 seconds later. It's become so nonsensical that at the recent Brazil game, the brazilian players after a bad ref. decision to send off Kaka with a red card were begging the ref. to look up on the stadion screen to see the replay which clearly showed nothing happened, but he couldn't be bothered.
This is the point of the game :) bad decisions aren't all that prevalent - you just notice them because people will yell (rightly) about them. Human error is what makes the sport so much fun.
But more importantly stopping for 30s while replays are reviewed just delays the game - a game which is designed to flow. That would kill it for me!
The problem is ensuring the game is recorded fairly - they could use the existing cameras certainly but I suspect it's a non-trivial discussion to ensure that the camera coverage is fair for review purposes.
dives are stupid and I hate them, but I think they are far overrated in the US (assumption from what I see in internet discussions)
Different sports, different "tactics".
No. Not at all. Games are already being interrupted constantly by players diving, kicking each other. Video replays wouldn't add that much.
One of the attractions of the game is that the referee is the law; he makes a decision on his best judgement and that is the game.
I see your point; and it has merit. But I think it really detracts from the spirit, the flow and the attraction of the game :)
Already, I can't take the world cup seriously. 2006, it was the Italians diving to get free penalty kicks. Now, I can't even trust the refs to make honest calls. I'll continue to watch the games until something better comes along.
Are you talking about a particular incident of dishonesty? Refs tend to be impartial as they benefit from being impartial (wages, honour) whilst would lose by being noticeably partial (lost license to ref, no more wages).
The ref for the Slovenia/US game was banned from refing any future Worldcup matches and is being investigated by FIFA.
It would be better if the refs just let the players play and only blow the whistle for the most egregious fouls.
Many many injuries are players pretending to be injured. Video capture would stop those "injuries". And if there is an injury you don't need to stop for 30 seconds. Replay reviewing can be quicker than the time it takes for the player to get up.
> bad decisions aren't all that prevalent
They are extremely prevalent, especially not punishing players who pretend to be injured.
Would it really? I don't think so at all - except in the most blatant cases. If contact is made, well, the player might be making a meal of it but the letter of the law is quite solid.
And if we had to stop each time a player went down to decide if contact was made or not that would just ruin the game :P
> Replay reviewing can be quicker than the time it takes for the player to get up.
Current rules require the player to leave the pitch for treatment. IMO this is a much more streamlined solution. If you change that for the same initial stoppage, plus the ref requesting a review, plus a restart of the game (which may take additional seconds to sort out) it starts to add up. I fail to see how a TV replay shortens that at all.
> They are extremely prevalent, especially not punishing players who pretend to be injured.
How do you define that though? Throwing themselves on the floor with no contact is, obviously, bad and should be punished. But if contact is made how do you judge whether an injury has occurred or not? It's next to impossible a decision to make. On many occasions players make the most out of it - on others the most innocent of taps can be excruciating (this is speaking as an ex-footballer in my youth :D).
To me TV replay represents classic over-engineering of a problem.
Ehm, obviously the players would pretend less if they get punished for it. That's the idea of a working ref system...
> Current rules require the player to leave the pitch for treatment. IMO this is a much more streamlined solution. If you change that for the same initial stoppage, plus the ref requesting a review, plus a restart of the game (which may take additional seconds to sort out) it starts to add up. I fail to see how a TV replay shortens that at all.
It's not like it all has to happen in sequence. You have a crew of 20 people continuously reviewing the slow motion capture and they tell the results to the ref, who only after that decides what to do. The only difference is that instead of using the ref's eyes, you use super-eyes. A little bit slower but not significantly slower, and significantly more accurate.
> How do you define that though? Throwing themselves on the floor with no contact is, obviously, bad and should be punished. But if contact is made how do you judge whether an injury has occurred or not? It's next to impossible a decision to make. On many occasions players make the most out of it - on others the most innocent of taps can be excruciating (this is speaking as an ex-footballer in my youth :D).
Are you claiming that a ref in the field can judge this better than one looking at a slow motion video?
On TV it's often very obvious that they are faking it. But of course judging this is hard sometimes, the point is that it is way, way harder for a ref on the field to judge than for somebody looking at slow motion video.
> To me TV replay represents classic over-engineering of a problem.
It's fixing an obviously broken system.
You see what I am saying about complicating things. These are just not needed as there are plenty of other fixes to try first!
Are you claiming that a ref in the field can judge this better than one looking at a slow motion video?
Well, uh, probably actually.
You keep saying "injuries" without really quantifying it. Do you mean throwing themselves on the ground and faking it (i.e. diving) or going down under a soft challenge and pretending to be hurt. The first is inexcusable (and sometimes the ref gets it wrong), the second is not on at all but it could still be a correct foul.
the point is that it is way, way harder for a ref on the field to judge than for somebody looking at slow motion video.
It doesn't matter; because it is just part and parcel of what makes up the game. End of. Football doesn't need to be Americanized (I think that term is justified, no offence intended) as far as I am concerned because we enjoy it the way it is.
There are problems, TV replays are not really the fix we are looking for.
It's fixing an obviously broken system.
Obvious to you. For those of us who love and enjoy the sport it is a terrible and badly thought out fix. No thanks :)
The takeaway is this is all part of the game WE enjoy watching/playing. Yes it is getting a little much at times. Yes there are steps we should take to knock the modern footballer into shape :P but no, TV is not the way.
> It doesn't matter; because it is just part and parcel of what makes up the game. End of. Football doesn't need to be Americanized (I think that term is justified, no offence intended) as far as I am concerned because we enjoy it the way it is.
BTW, I'm from Europe. And everybody I know agrees that TV replays for judging fouls is good. So, your appeal to "we" is a non-argument at best.
> Obvious to you. For those of us who love and enjoy the sport it is a terrible and badly thought out fix. No thanks :)
You are dropping all reasoning and you are just saying "we like it this way, no thanks.".
> TV is not the way.
Then what is?
To summarize your two points:
1) "We already like it this way" -- unclear who we is, and not an argument against replays: maybe it would be even better with replays.
2) "There are other, better fixes" -- without mentioning what these fixes are.
I've discuses them elsewhere. The main ones:
- setting limits on player wages - harsher penalties for cheating or foul play via post-match review - faster review of matches
These address the same issue without materially affecting the game.
What does america have to do with it?
TV replays is a very US influenced idea. It seems fair to term it that way,
And everybody I know agrees that TV replays for judging fouls is good. So, your appeal to "we" is a non-argument at best.
ahem :) see below:
You are dropping all reasoning and you are just saying "we like it this way, no thanks.".
maybe it would be even better with replays.
I already laid out in quite some detail why I feel replays would interrupt game play and generally make the game less fun to watch overall.
I agree that these are good suggestions, but you want to change the game. Remember US-Slovenia? I don't suppose you think it's good for one side (not) to win because the referee made an error?
> ahem :) see below:
Exactly my point: "we" is not a good argument.
> I already laid out in quite some detail why I feel replays would interrupt game play and generally make the game less fun to watch overall.
The point is that it doesn't interrupt the game, unless there was foul play (and then the game should be interrupted). The current situation is that the game gets interrupted when the referee thinks there is foul play, the situation with replays is that the game gets interrupted when there is foul play. The result is that there will be less foul play because the players know that the probability that they will be caught is much higher than it is now. And there will be less pretending to be hurt, because it's much harder to lie on slow motion capture.
You seem to be arguing against a system where the referee constantly stops the game and asks for replay reviews, which is not what I'm proposing. What I'm proposing is a system where a crew continuously watches replays and gives this information to the referee. It's the same idea as sideline referees, but much more accurate and general.
If everyone is wondering why the USA does not get into soccer, it is because the blatant cheating makes it a joke. It is not a real sport, and never will be, when one dive can win a game for a side, and have a player sent off. Americans have a sense of fair play, that will never accept this.
Of course, this would never get through. South American, Italian, Spanish and Greek clubs have to much sway over FIFA.
But I am utterly unconvinced that in-game replays will make a difference.
In fact the main problem is the culture of footballers. Go back a few years and things are a whole lot more brighter. Men were men :D and the rules were the law. You are right; strict punishment for cheating would help fix that. Setting limits for player wages and so forth as well would be an important idea.
I don't know if there is such thing as a World American Football Association, but if there was, I'm sure Americans would call the shots.
However, what you say might still be true, they really do not care about the cheating that affects the game so much.
I am just trying to help you understand why soccer will not be big in USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand.
The number of refereee interventions would go down, not up, and the number of games won by theatrics instead of skill would drastically decrease.
lying doesn't matter, it's just expressing emotions. you almost never see a referee backing up from a decision, more often discussions result a yellow card.
> Would it really kill soccer if we had video replay?
it wouldn't if they were limited, just as switching players is. if one team had one single chance of calling for a replay, it wouldn't kill the dynamic, but would solve the problem of nonaccredited goals or the Kaka situation with Ivory Coast.
This is roughly the system employed by the NFL, and it works fairly well. Coaches can challenge a number of calls per game (2, I think?) and are penalized with losing a timeout if their challenge turns out to be invalid. I don't know if there is an equivalent penalty that could be leveled at a soccer team for an invalid challenge.
>lying doesn't matter, it's just expressing emotions. you almost never see a referee backing up from a decision, more often discussions result a yellow card.
Lying matters to some people - good sportsmen for example. When I played (only amateur: Uni/Sunday league) I'd tell the ref if he'd made a wrong decision in my favour.
IMO lying is not a proper part of [association] football; that's why I gave up on footie some time ago.
Bookings really shouldn't be reviewed, at least during the match. Perhaps FIFA could institute a review process post-match, however, to reinstate players that would be lost due a red card or multiple yellows.
There's a good reason you see players rolling around on the pitch like bruised 4 year old girls, it's beneficial in the long run to the player feigning injury. You're more likely to win a beneficial free kick from it than two yellow cards in a row, so the practice continues.
Some national football associations (e.g. Italy) start training kids to do this at a young age.
It would probably stop overnight if a player seen taking a dive were to directly receive a red card, or a three game ban.
Calculate the fouls suffered per game played. Italy is number 1.
I've never seen a 4yo girl (or boy) act like such a pillock; they cry when they're hurt and then normally get on with it. I think you do a disservice to 4 year olds.
Someone mentioned the English Premier League as an example of having a heavy stance on fouls and dives.
1. FIFA makes a ton of money from the World Cup. The sponsorship and protection efforts of the sponsorship are ridiculously elaborate.
2. Even FIFA doesn't scale the game linearly. In the World Cup there are always 3 refs on the field, even though really only 1 is needed. Further, there are many different types of football balls (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Football_%28ball%29 ), so again, the game played on the streets or school leagues is not necessarily exactly the same as the World Cup.
3. FIFA constantly innovates in the making of the actual ball. Every WC we get a new ball that has different characteristics. This year's ball is the most consistent in distance and trajectory in tests (i.e. hit it the same way and you'll get the same volley).
With all that said, I don't think "maintaining consistency" is the reason FIFA refuses to introduce replay refs. I think it's more about politics: they have always supported the number 1 ref as the final arbiter of play and introducing a replay ref would undermine this long-held traditional philosophy.
I don't get that; the extra "refs" simply reduce the chance of an error being made. It is possible to play pretty effectively without them.
Actually there is still only one ref - none of the others can make a decision, only advise the referee and provide an alternative viewpoint if he misses an event.
I can't see much of a net gain in video refs simply due to the unnecessary delay. One of the delights of football is that 15-20 seconds after a goal they are kicking off again.
(the calls in this world cup have been pretty good; I've watched, literally, every game so far and there have been a couple of shockers - which obviously we notice - but generally it has been good)
What am I missing?
Really, though, it's a cultural thing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_rugby_league is pretty typical.
Basketball and baseball, however, are tremendously popular around the world.
The game is supposed to be exactly the same when played at World Cup level as it is when played at Saturday morning club level, and even below that - the streets of Brazil, etc.
Fifa has got its eye on the global market for playing football, which is what (possibly) makes it the world's most popular sport. It doesn't have its eye on the global market for watching football.
Football is scaled down mostly because you don't need expensive infrastructure to play and train - 2 sticks in the ground or draw lines on a fence and you're ready to kick - no equipment (baseball, hockey) besides the ball itself, no need to build anything (basketball, hockey). I think that's a far more important factor in football popularity than the rules set.
We'd have kickabouts with more players (10+ on pitch) at senior school and play offside sometimes, occasionally someone would ref but more often it was reffing by consensus/honesty and with reduced players it was hard to get off-side to work, normally we'd just accuse someone of "goal hanging" and it would be enough.
Where they have could some value is in dealing with automatic suspensions. If a player is wrongly red-carded, for example, I see no reason a replay couldn't be used to exonerate them and undo the automatic suspension that follows a red card.
No, but it's slowly trending upwards. Without looking it up, the top American spectator sports are American football, baseball, basketball, NASCAR racing, hockey, golf, and tennis.
The problem is that the best American athletes look to one of top three American sports - if you look at top NBA and NFL players, many of them seem well-suited to futbol, but it's not where the money/popularity/culture is at in the USA yet. As long as the fast and strong American athletes are looking to become running backs, wide receivers, and point guards instead of midfielders and strikers, the game won't reach the height of popularity. But it'll slowly grow in popularity if the U.S. keeps making decent showings internationally. Being a top 5 American sport by 2030 wouldn't surprise me.
After that, it'd really only take one charismatic, transcendental American player for the sport to really break through - if there was an American Pele, Maradona, George Best type player, it'd go a long ways, just like Tiger Woods did for golf, Joe Namath did for American football, Michael Jordan did for basketball, etc, etc. So I could see the game trending up in the rankings, and then it's all about if it gets the one dominant, charismatic force that people fall in love with who kids want to follow in the player's footsteps.
It's still hampered by the fact that we have pretty third-rate players by international standards. The American leagues for gridiron, basketball, and baseball are de facto world championships because the best players in those sports always play here, but in soccer the best club could be English or Spanish or German or Italian, and Americans have a problem with that.
I would say it's a top 4 sport already (displacing hockey) but the top 3 is hard to break into. I suspect it'll displace baseball next.
Not a chance. The NHL is enjoying some of its highest ratings ever.
The whole point of playing a game as a child, IMO, is to learn the basic skills of the game as well as possible and to have fun. Do you think the street kids of Brazil and Argentina, some of whom grow up to be some of the finest natural footballers in the world, worry about the pair of t-shirts they use as goalposts isn't FIFA regulated, or the battered football they use isn't either?
The whole point of playing the game at amateur level when you are older is to play the game you have loved since you were a child. Do you think every amateur game even has 2 linesmen to aid the ref?
This is a totally different proposition to watching the World Cup, Champions League, English Premiership, La Liga or the Serie A. Millions of fans tune in and watch these high-level games, and billions of euros are generated by the sport. When Thierry Henry cheats by blatantly handling the ball, incorrectly getting France into the World Cup, when Kaka, one of the greats of the modern game, gets sent off by some diving, cheating pr*ck, when the ref disallows a perfectly legit goal for the USA, millions of fans are turned off by this crap. Diving is another huge area which is wrecking soccer too. Video refereeing and being able to appeal obviously incorrect decisions like most other modern sports is badly needed to bring the game into the 21st century.
The argument about video refereeing slowing the game down doesn't stand up either. At least trial the system for a few months in major competitions where the necessary equipment already is in place - if it doesn't work after that, then I've got egg on my face. People who argue the reverse are mired in the past, and don't have the balls and vision to at least experiment with something that could bring on a new level of professionalism, and fairness to the sport instead of rewarding cheaters and divers.
or in hn style - soccer may be the the ultimate example of a MVP or 'minimal viable professional game' that you can play with a ball and two teams =)
i play soccer in an amatuer league every weekend and although the referees generally are not of a high standard, I still enjoy it. its part of the game.
Given that as background, the lack of consistency I see in World Cup officiating literally makes me shudder. And the worst part is that the usual straw men brought up in response -- massive delays due to replay, etc., etc., -- are, well, just straw men. A few simple, non-game-disrupting, changes (a highly-relevant example: let a team captain or a coach ask an official to state the foul for which a penalty has been issued, something which, so far as I'm aware, practically every other organized sport in the world does) could vastly improve both the actual and perceived consistency and fairness of soccer, but FIFA doesn't seem to care enough to do anything.
What would be interesting if a well known respected soccer league (italian/spanish/english) instituted video replays in some manner into the games to test this out. then we would know how it would affect the game (flow, behaviour etc). all we have right now is alot of personal subjective opinions (including my opinions), which we have no way to validate. =)
DCI actually "gets" the fact that punishments should vary according to level of play (look for Rules Enforcement Levels or REL for short), and so do the local football judge federations - when I played a small football tournament, the judge routinely overlooked some small infractions that would warrant a call in a high-level match (not throwing correctly the ball from the sideline, ball position for free throws, etc).
FIFA officiating was pretty bad, true, and I personally think that instant replay (sparingly used) could improve it a bit as well.
I also like the harsher leagues (someone mentioned the English Premier) over the more foul-prone ones (Italy and my own country Uruguay are egregious examples)
Indeed, which is one of the things that makes it scale so well. Felten's insistence on uniformity doesn't address that at all, really, and I think it exposes one of the big weaknesses of his argument: a Magic pro tour event doesn't just have stricter enforcement, for example. It also has a huge staff of officials, additional supplies and equipment, and all sorts of other stuff. From that point of view, insisting on having no "official" clock at the World Cup because your local neighborhood game doesn't have one just seems silly; when you get to a certain level you can and should introduce those things.
FIFA officiating was pretty bad, true, and I personally think that instant replay (sparingly used) could improve it a bit as well.
I don't personally care one way or another about replay. I would require referees to explain their calls on request (as a Magic judge I don't even have a choice -- I have to explain my rulings even if no-one asks me to), and look for a way to deal with fouls which occur but aren't immediately witnessed by the referee (golf, where you're expected to call an official on yourself if you do something wrong, is a good example; soccer could have a similar system and it would help with things like Thierry Henry's handball).
Note that every popular American sport has enough stoppage time during each break to show at least 4-5 highly-targeted ads. In my opinion, this is why the networks aren't really pushing soccer. On-pitch ads (i.e. sideline or sideboard ads) wouldn't really cut it because every network needs to have regional advertisements, and lots of them. Just my $0.02.
This is already done in some countries for football (soccer). The thing is, it's probably harder and a more difficult sell than just airing the same old commercials during a break. It helps that football(soccer) is wildly popular so advertisers are willing to jump that hurdle in exchange for guaranteed audience in the football-mad countries.
Interesting chicken-and-egg problem, it would really take a combination of a brave network and brave advertisers to change the whole thing -- and so, the future looks bleak...
That, to me, seems to be a problem of referee training and briefing. FIFA apparently wants the referees to be as pedantic as they are. That should be addressed first and foremost, not exotic rule changes.
I’m all for extensively and carefully testing everything that was proposed – exact time keeping, two referees on the field, video replay, no more offside, you name it – and I really think FIFA should get more aggressive about it, but they should also be very careful about not changing the game. That has to be a long and careful process, not some ad-hoc decision.
There is only one thing I would change: if a violation is noted by one of the refs (such as an offsides), and a goal is scored during that same time the violation flag went up...let the coach have the ability to call for a review of the violation call.
Besides; in the example you cite in the vast majority of cases it will be ruled as a no-goal (I've seen it happen quite a few times this world cup).
The cynic would say that it provides emotionally crippled men with an outlet for showing their emotions.
Any attempt to "fix" the game by making refereeing better makes the game more fair. While that might seem like a good thing, I don't think anyone is qualified to decide whether that will make the game more or less popular. And considering it's the world's most popular sport, tinkering with the games in unpredictable ways is stupid.
Actually we played 5 to a side (smaller field) football/soccer in college without referee and without the offside rule (which would make it hard to call). The only point of friction between teams were the faults (only obvious ones were called) so it could get a little rough but other than that the situations are mostly obvious and you can do without a ref in friendly games.
For critical decisions in a World Cup soccer could use video replay though, especially since the scoring is usually so low (average is about 1.5 goals per game so far I think) that a goal changes everything. Perhaps it could be used after the games just to punish "divers".
FIFA (and UEFA for that matter) for that matter is a highly political organization which handles a lot of money with a somewhat obscure agenda. Fairness is a little bit less important when compared to leaving out big money nations(or clubs) from a tournement.
Error-prone refereeing is a vital tool for keeping as many big money nations in the tournements. Had there been video refereeing it would be harder to provide the extra push to the teams that need it.
Sounds too much like a conspiracy theory? Then tell me why it's almost always the smaller teams at the wrong end of the stick.
Your conspiracy theory, actually, is much better suited to the NBA, which has always seemed fixed in favor of large-market teams.
Another thing that for the life of me I cannot understand hasn't been implemented: A chip in the ball to determine off sides and whether the ball has crossed the goal or side lines.
Well, lots of people do not like cheating, do not like deliberate diving. For me, this completely ruins the game of soccer, and I will never take it seriously as a sport. I don't tune in to see which side can game the system the best.
I don't think it's nearly as bad as the American incarnation of hockey, where fistfights are tolerated with a slap on the wrist. Talk about encouraging unsportsmanlike behavior. If you tried that in soccer, you'd at the very least get a red card, if not more.
Incidentally, if you hate diving, just watch the leagues where diving isn't tolerated, like the English Premier League.
I agree part of the beauty of the game is that you can play the same game in the park with friends, but most of the arguments were against details of the same game, not changing it (stopping clock, replays etc).
First and foremost, it verges on a straw man; Felten argues against unspecified "Americans" with largely-unspecified views, when in fact criticism has been quite specific and has come from practically every part of the globe. The things people are asking to have "fixed" are not the lack of an official clock or any of his other examples; the things people are asking to have fixed seem mostly to be abysmally inconsistent officiating standards. Which, in an article praising the uniformity of the game at nearly all levels, is a glaring oversight.
Second, Felten's concept of "scalability" is deeply flawed; we might as well argue for the World Cup final to be played on a parking lot with piled-up sticks for goals -- after all, your neighborhood game doesn't have those big fancy stadiums, does it? Privileging some aspects of the game by allowing them to be radically different at higher levels of play, while arbitrarily requiring other aspects to be uniform at all levels, is frankly irrational.
Worst of all, he touches on baseball as a game which "scales", but fails to note that while the basic rules of the game are the same at practically every level, the implementation varies considerably and the game is better for that. For example, a local sandlot game doesn't need six professional umpires, instant replay and a strike-zone-tracking pitch-plotting camera system, but a major-league championship game does. This allows each game to have the level of officiating it actually needs, rather than forcing impossible burdens on the local game or false austerity on the professional game.
What really bothers me is when teams "play for the tie" in certain situations and that's a viable option. Sports are not about playing not to lose, they're about playing to win. That's why the old Brazil teams and the current Argentina team are so fun to watch -- they're not worried about losing, they're playing to win. That's why the last US game was so entertaining -- they had to go for it in the second half so at least salvage a tie. Soccer should encourage more play like that.
When you look at the reality of match congestion in top level clubs, you have situations where you may have to play 3-4 matches a week at times, when 1-2 matches a week is the most a player can reasonably recover from. As a result of that, clubs already have to prioritize which competitions they care about--a club simultaneously competes for a league, more than one domestic cup, and maybe even an international cup or two, so "less important" competitions like the English League Cup and even, in recent years, the English FA Cup aren't taken seriously by some top clubs. You start adding extra time to a significant proportion of a club's league matches and you exacerbate that problem and lower the quality of play.