Opinion: Why football should be more like boxing

Let the clock do the job Source: The Week UK

Time is a delicate matter in football; especially time added and time wasted.

 

The added time in football matches is one of the last mysteries of the western world. Nobody except the referee alone knows how many minutes there is still to play. No one actually knows if it will be adequate time added for injuries or substitutions. Is there any sport where the spectators and those involved do not know how much time there is remaining? It only leads to controversy and talk about benefits for the bigger team. It is rather questionable why the time added on the referee’s watch is not shown on the big screen as well for everyone to see. No controversy, no fuss.

 

Another plague in football concerning this is the time-wasting, especially concerning injuries. This is something that the footballing authorities have wanted to get rid of but have not actually done much about it. At the same time, they have all the power at their disposal.

 

The yellow card, for example, for time-wasting goalkeepers has not proven to be enough. The clock would do the job if the referee used that instead consequently. It is here I would want football to be more like boxing, where the referee starts to count when a boxer is not able to continue in a certain amount of time. There should be a definite time limit for goalkeepers to kick the ball off.

 

That should mean that every incident in football that takes more than ten seconds to resume the game should start the referee’s clock. This makes it meaningless to mess around and appropriate time is added for lazy corners and injuries/simulations.

 

It is impossible for the referee to know/determine if a player is faking it or not so let the clock do the talking about how serious it is. If a player stays down and the game is stopped, so should also be the case for the clock. No controversy, no fuss.

 

Do you agree? Or would you like to ADD something?

Tags football Simulations Time-wasting