I’ve watched football all my life and would probably say I have an unhealthy obsession with the game and like all fans I have my own ideas on how to improve it. My main issue though is the recommended linesman/assistant.
In the top flight in countries like England, Italy and Spain, where money is available, why do we only have two linesmen? Surely it makes sense to have four? They can then make better judgments about decisions about whether or not the ball crossed the line. It should also increase the likelihood that an attacker will get the benefit of the doubt on offside calls if players only receive offside when both linesmen raise their flags.
But the main reason I have to push for four linesmen is because a referee needs their help. All four linesmen could be aware of shirt tugs, elbows, and other occurrences that occur out of the referee’s view.
What annoys me the most are the blatant body checks and shirt yanking that goes past the referee’s sight to stop a player running after a defender. I’m sick of being told by the media that seeing players sent off ruins the game when, in my opinion, what ruins the game are cynical so-called “smart” fouls that stop an attacker in mid-motion for very little punishment.
Also, I think if players were punished more severely for those types of fouls, they would be much less likely to commit them in the first place. I don’t think they lead to more yellow cards and red cards overall, just a reduction in cynical fouls.
After all, they said that banning the tackle from behind would lead to most games ending with at least one player being ejected, but as we’ve seen, all that happened is that players modified their game to compensate for the changes in the rules.
The other thing is that a linesman will always be on the right hand side of the field, unlike now where players can get away with taking corners outside the quad, etc. because the linesman is on the other side of the field.
Apart from small changes like this, I personally feel that football doesn’t need to change. I would certainly hate to see the ref lose the power he currently has, as while it might reduce the potential for corruption, he would also lose the talking points the ref provides by making human error.
Let’s face it, we all want to talk about the ref who misses or calls a crucial penalty, misses a free kick, etc., giving us an easy excuse for our team to lose instead of admitting they weren’t good enough to beat the opposition.
After all, who doesn’t think their team is the best team out there? We all know that at every level, the fans believe that their team is the best the world has ever seen, even though we know it’s not true, we still believe it.
Having said that, it would be an improvement if the match officials, a representative of the two clubs that just played and an independent official, sat down after a match and reviewed the match video to verify their decisions. Club officials could then consult decisions with which the clubs disagreed and the match referee could impose retrospective penalties or pardons.