It does depend on what the new directive is trying to achieve which isn't immediately obvious. VAR could have spotted Azpilicueta clutching his face easily but nothing was done. It suggests they aren't watching for such incidents.
VAR doesn't have a remit to check on fouls so wouldn't flag it up to the referee. While we don't want to go down the route of VAR re-reffing the game I don't see why it can't have a word in the ref's ear as he's walking over to check on the 'injured ' player letting him know that no contact was made or whatever. Referees have been guilty of both allowing play to carry on when there's a real injury and stopping play when there isn't. For all our arguments about how are they supposed to know the difference, they always act as if they somehow know. I'd like them to be interviewed after games and questioned as to why they let play go on when player X went down but not when player Y did and occasionally play back incidents to them and ask them to explain their decision. They may think twice about some of their decisions if they knew they may be made to explain. That's only one part that needs cleaning up of course and doesn't address the players faking injury. Maybe do the same with them. Any player faking is pulled after the game to explain their actions.
The simple way to stop time wasting is to just pause the clock when the ball isn't in play and reduce games from 90 to 60/50 mins / whatever...keeper wants to take 2mins cleaning his boots, wiping his gloves and taking a drink before kicking the ball? Fine, time aint even started ticking until he's kicked it. Slowing the game down with drawn out throw-ins? No worries, isn't an issue any more. Not the prettiest solution though to see the timer stop/starting constantly and football purists will detest such radical changes to the game so it'll never happen. Only way to stop cheating is to raise the severity of the punishments, retrospectively punish players who've been missed by the ref at the time and make use of the video refs to at the very least signal to refs when there's 'clear' cheating such as zero contact, faking an injury to an untouched part of the body, stealing yards on throwins, holding players, whatever you like. Even just the threat of punishments being made outside of the game will stop many from cheating and play-acting. FIFA deems that to be undermining the onfield refs so fat chance of that changing. The embarrassment issue mentioned by Johnsonsbaby would also be a huge one but when the overwhelming majority of football commenters, writers and pundits are former pros who have to defend their own, it just won't happen. The old "if I had a dollar for every time someone said but there was contact so he was entitled..." blah blah. There are simple solutions but either the fans won't like them or the powers that be won't like them so we'll continue as we are.
No, this is the one thing i like about Yank sport. Increase the game to 95/100/110 mins or whatever it takes. We pay to see 90mins play and should get that every game.
Just tell 'em "the more you piss about the longer we'll be here, so if you all want to get home tonight get on with the bloody game".
Interviewing after the game would be great but I'd go one step further and mic the referee's up so we can hear them throughout the game.
They will never mike the refs up until the players start showing some respect and i don't see any movement towards that.
We never see 90 mins of football. The last stats I remember seeing (albeit it was a while ago) was that the average time the ball was in play during a 90 minute game, was circa 60 minutes. The idea of having this as a countdown clock with someone off field managing it, has been suggested before. Not sure I’m a fan, as we’d end up with unofficial & contrived ‘time outs’.
After discussing fakery here is the issues with head impacts writ large. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-union/58369271 Real measurable decline in mental function in just one season. People need to start thinking about this stuff. Fifa should be mandating similar testing to establish impact of heading
Players won't show respect until they are forced too, putting a mic on the the ref would shame the players into behaving
That's what they do in the US (or at least what they used to do) instead of stoppage time. Whereas, I see the point, it takes away some of the anticipation at the end of the game.
I can't see the ref being miced (is that really a word?) up for the crowd to hear while there's so much profanity being hurled at them. They'd be deluged with complaints.
Maybe we should micify the players as well as the ref, so we can hear what abuse they're hurling at the ref.
Tbh you only had to watch any of last season on tv with the fake crowd noise off. Commentators kept having to apologise for bad language
Probably - nothing really looks right though. Apparently some use miked - but that ignores the root of the word and still doesn't feel right.
