Respect for referees

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I don't think it's necessarily a question of referees 'earning respect'. The root cause of the problems at the moment is the vast sums of money in the game, and the fact that much of this goes straight into the player's pockets.

As in Rugby, only the Team Captain should be able to talk to the ref - anyone else harassing him like we see should be a yellow card. Same as waving imaginary cards should be a yellow card offence. When people start missing games and teams start losing because they cannot treat the officials with respect, then you'll start to see a change in their behaviour, because the fans will demand it.

100% agree with this WLW, it'd take a few weeks for players to get the message, but if refs stuck to their principles and booked anyone other than the captain who argued with them, players and managers would soon learn.

I'm also a supporter of goal-line technology and, further in the future when perhaps a system has been developed that is efficient, reliable and quick, some form of a challenge system (one per half per team as Amit recently proposed for example). I think teams would then employ tactics whereby we'd mainly see these challenges reserved for 'in the box' decisions only, which is where lengthy stoppages occur anyway while referees sort out the ensuing bedlam and thus it wouldn't really hold the game up much more than we see currently.

Still, the first step would be to implement the Captain-only rule when speaking to the ref.
 
Would a system of employing 4 linesmen work, one on each half side of the pitch. An offside is given if both linesmen agree, if only one flags then we play on. If a goal or another form of advantage is gained by the attacking team, then the offside decision can be reviewed. If nothing comes from the original play then just play on.

This actually isn't as far-fetched as it sounds; think of the number of officials in tennis watching each line on the court for instance, who are there to aid the Umpire's decision-making.