A radical revision of the rules of football

Ambiguity reigns in the way different referees make use of the yellow card and interpret a play involving a foul. The application and use of the yellow card should be abolished.

A different system in which a certain number of accumulated team fouls would lead to a given player being sent off for an extended amount of time is worth consideration. For example, every time a team commits five fouls they would be punished by the removal of one player off the field for 10 minutes and have to defend a penalty kick against them.

All match play fouls and other offenses meriting a yellow card would just count toward the accumulated collective team foul number. The current criteria in place for red card offenses would just continue to be applied in the new system. Forcing teams to play a man down for 10 minutes every time they commit five fouls collectively would go a long way in addressing the issue of excessive stop of play due to fouling and the problem of lack of space that characterizes modern football. No matter what rule you have in place fouls will always be committed. With the new rule teams more than likely would always play parts of the match with a man down since the lower threshold of five collective fouls would always be met. The proposed change would open up space in the pitch more frequently over the course of a game, and the brilliance of individual play would once again reign.

The rule is a win-win situation since hypothetically even if a team did not commit any fouls the game would still benefit since there would be less stoppage time and brilliance of individual play would be less targeted physically. Committing fouls would surely turn out to be a huge liability if some of these changes were implemented.

Technology/instant replay

The use of instant replay has been debated over the last several years. It is one that has to be approached with much caution and deliberation since making use of it would fundamentally destroy the philosophical essence of the beautiful game.

Daily living and football play are characterized by a continuous stream of potentially fateful events that cannot be turned back and where there is no reversal of fortunes. To disrupt this essential philosophical dynamic of the game is unnatural, nonhuman and defies the omnipotence of God. It’s a recourse that we do not have in life and we should not have in match play. A football match -- just as life -- draws on competing themes such as justice, injustice, victory, defeat, happiness, sadness, tragedy and exhilaration. The complexity and drama surrounding such powerful emotional concepts gives the game a mystical and magical aura. The lure and mystery of the unknown is a central element at the core of daily living and of play in football. The outcome of a game is uncertain, and that constant state of unpredictability is what makes football so dramatic, captivating and the passion of the masses.

The excessive use of instant replay, as in other sports such as American football, would be a shot to the heart of soccer, disruptive to the fluid nature of the game and lead to a monotonous character that is prevalent in every other sport that abuses such recourse. American football is characterized by multiple set plays interspersed with a series of stoppage intervals and is not played in a fluid continuous fashion. The concept of instant replay is surely more transferable and less disruptive to the nature of American football than to the fluid nature of soccer.

It is about time that FIFA take a closer look at the laws governing the beautiful game. The fact that football’s governing body has been extremely conservative and slow to act in pushing for significant changes is unacceptable and at times puts the game to shame. The archaic laws of the game now in place have not advanced concomitantly with the changing physiological capacity of the players, and for that the beauty of the sport has taken a beating. Someone high up in the echelons of the football power structure should heed the call for change and usher the game to a new frontier.