Anyone watching Portugal v Switzerland - VAR having a bit of a nightmare (again), dodgy free kick scored by Ronaldo and now a very dodgy pen to the Swiss
There are soooo many bad referees out there and ****ing about with the rules means that you can now commit GBH in the centre of the pitch but concede a penalty for looking at someone funny.
Agreed. I think a lot of "mission creep" has occurred with respect to offences in the penalty area. As far as I'm aware, the rules of football apply to the whole pitch, but if the same offence occurs in this particular area, then a penalty is awarded. Trouble is that there has now become another level of scrutiny for the area, so that the same standards are not applied all over the pitch. A lot of fouls (and handballs!) that result in penalties would simply not be considered in the rest of the pitch, those same "offences" simply don't get examined. So if Salah wants to get blown over by the wind outside the area, it might get ignored (though being Pool it probably won't), whilst in the area it gets a penalty. I think this is contrary to the original intent of the laws. Moreover, we can now see penalties being manufactured, by cheating (let's call it what it really is) and now you can also aim at someone's arm. Yes, you can kick the ball away from goal, but if you manage to hit the target (hey guys, let's all practice this in training!) then you get a penalty. You don't even have to try to block the ball or do anything dodgy. And goodness knows what an "unnatural position" of the arm is. I'd say running around with both hands clasped behind your back looks pretty unnatural to me. What VAR is going to do is make the penalty area even more special, and even more likely to be run with effectively different laws to the rest of the pitch.
Well said. I don't know who is driving this or why, but penalising players and teams for inadvertent hand ball doesn't make any sense to me. Nor does completely ignoring players who dive and feign injury. That Bournemouth player body checked Sonny and then, seconds later, hit him in the back.....no booking. He then dives on the floor when Sonny reacts and a player who deserves a booking for his reaction, despite not being protected by the referee, is sent off. It's very poor for players who are trying to entertain and encourages more foul play. Adding together some of these rule changes leaves a game that is lesser as a whole. The high level administration of the game needs to be more transparent and have more input from people who actually understand it. For years, in the stadium, we've been denied watching repeats of 'contoversial' incidents for 'god knows what reason'. Now we're going to see and hear the idiots award penalties for no good reason at all.....Go figure.
I'd like to see games without offside as well. Initially just as a test. Does it add enough to the game to support the ridiculous amount of controversy that it causes and the nonsense of defending lines at free kicks? Even with VAR, it's sometimes impossible to determine whether a forward's head is a millimetre ahead of a defender's toe, at the exact fraction of a second that the ball was released. It takes forever and is as likely to be right as wrong when a decision is reached. All for what? To prevent goal hanging and long punts upfield? If we're handing out penalties like political honours, what's the point in that?
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder....but you can get it out with Optrex. These things take time, as Morrissey said. The law change on back passes started off with 'keepers hoofing the ball up the field. Now goalkeepers, with some exceptions , are like libero's. The immediate attraction of belting the ball upfield to a striker would eventually stop, just as it has from goal kicks and back passes.
The Watney Cup IIRC. They drew an imaginary line continuing from the edge of the area, you could only be offside inside that.
England: Pickford; Walker, Stones, Maguire, Chilwell; Barkley, Rice, Delph; Rashford, Sancho, Sterling Rose, Dier, Kane and Alli on the bench. Ref is Dick Turpin.
An England team with none of our players - that's unusual, certainly been a while since we had no one in the side.
If I am honest I won't watch with the same enthusiasm tonight - interesting that the dutch have picked both of their players who were involved at the weekend and Southgate has picked none! Fancy that the Dutch may win a close game tonight
They could easily have a tech-driven offside system. Every player carries an "offside chip" or some similar name. Stick it on whatever part of the body is deemed to be the most important when determining offside. Monitor it by GPS or whatever and you'd instantly know where someone's offside chip is in relation to someone else's. OK only the top leagues can afford this tech, but they can afford it and I'm sure it's technically possible.
