-Man City
Ok, so it’s now the norm to spend £50m on fullbacks. So much so that when Arsenal offer Celtic £15m for a player who is still recovering from double hernia surgery the pundits reply “this is an insult to Celtic. When you see teams like Man City (and now Man U paid £50m for Wan-Bissaka) paying £50m for top quality fullbacks you have to think Tierney is worth that.”
Not only are they distorting the transfer market with their ludicrous transfer sums, but since they are owned by a country they virtually have limitless funds to spend on players and salaries. And worse: Financial Fair Play doesn’t seem like it’s going to stop them.
Also, can we talk about how boring their football is? Guardiola’s become so regimented in his playing style that City are often hard to watch for more than a few minutes. Basically, they do his 10 pass buildup, then they probe until they can get someone down the wings, get to the byline, and cutback. If they don’t score and the opponent gets the ball, they close space to win the ball back, and if they don’t win the ball back, they just foul to stop play.
I don’t think I can stand another year of Man City.
-The handball rule
If you thought the handball rule was bad before, wait until you get a load of the new handball rule! Now, almost any time the ball hits a hand it’s going to be called handball. Or not. It will depend on the referee’s discretion as usual. But the rule is much more rigid now and by removing intent, there is less discretion.
I can recall about 3 or 4 instances last season with Arsenal where the referee didn’t call a handball that they will almost certainly call next season. Plus with VAR review of every goal there will be several chalked off – if the ball touches the hand in any position and then goes on to score it will be called off.
I don’t know how this will play out but by waiting for a season to introduce VAR in the PL we are going to get both VAR and the new handball rule at the same time and I’m concerned that we will just see refereeing chaos for the first half of the season.
-The offside rule
The offside rule is broken. I’ve always complained about the whole “phases of play” component and the “player offside but not effecting play” bit and neither of those things are changing. But next season with VAR we are going to see so many miniscule calls. Whether a toe is offside.
And I have to wonder, which I have privately for a long time, whether the offside rule should even be applied against a player who is running away from goal. Surely, if you “come back from an offside position” you are running in to defenders and not gaining any advantage from that action.
I don’t know. This seems so boring. I didn’t fall in love with football because people were drawing yellow lines on screens. Watching nearly every play take 2 minutes to debate whether a toe was offside is super boring.
-Alexi Lalas
I saw him screaming in the studio about how the Cameroonian women needed to comport themselves better. Unbelievable lack of self reflection.
-VAR
Ben Piggot on Twitter (@BenPiggot) made a comment that I thought was insightful: do we want to award a 75% goal chance for minor infractions in the box?
I think what VAR does is it raises minor infractions to full blown fouls and as a result unduly punishes defenders. If the ball nicks your arm – even if it’s by your side – it’s going to be a penalty. If you go to clear the ball and accidentally kick someone with the follow through, that’s a penalty.
And with the new focus on keepers being forced to stay on the line these won’t just be 75% chances, I think that they will be higher. Fewer penalties will be saved.
Is it more fair? That remains to be seen. So far it feels like it benefits big teams, better players, more than anyone else. Is that really more fair?
But more than anything, what VAR does for me is it deadens the games. I fell in love with football because of the back and forth, the flow, and those incredible moments when a team scores. Now, when I watch the games I’m not as drawn in to the attack, and I wait to celebrate the goal, because I know that it’s going to be reviewed by VAR.
VAR is sucking the life and fun out of football for me.
-People doing selfie videos at the game
Who subscribes to these? Stop it.
-FIFA
Surely you can see that FIFA is nothing more than a corrupt gang? All of their tournaments aren’t about football, they are about spinning money and not even money for the organizations, but mostly money for FIFA.
FIFA don’t care about players. There are currently how many men’s tournaments taking place? After a full season of football which followed a World Cup? Yeah dude, players are going to be burned out soon.
-UEFA
FIFA’s corrupt little cousin. Remember when the new “Nations League” was supposed to make International friendlies meaningful? Remember when they were going to enforce FFP? It’s just more of the FIFA model: endless money-spinning matches, craven submission to petrodollar owners, and light punishment for countries/clubs that are openly racist.
Plus, you know, there’s the whole “holding the UEFA Cup final in Baku” which was pretty clearly awarded because of.. well, it wasn’t awarded for football reasons lets just put it that way.
It’s not really Man City as it is money that has ruined football. Before City, it was Barcelona, Chelsea, Real Madrid, and United, and now add PSG, Bayern, Juventus, Atletico are all flexing financial power not just within their domestic leagues, but across the continent.
Fair enough.
City and PSG are in a different class entirely – these are clubs effectively owned by nation-states. Abramovitch spent oodles of money – but it was his own money. Whether or not you believe he earned it honestly is another debate, but what is not debatable is that City and PSG are owned by nations where there is no personal wealth and human rights abuses are common place. Barca, Real, United, Juve, Bayern and Atletico are all businesses run on traditional profit/loss models, their power coming from the fan base of the clubs which you can’t begrudge them.
Would it be far fetched to see Kim Jong Un buy a football team as a PR effort? Bashar al-Assad decides to rehabilitate his reputation for gassing children by buying a team and pumping a billion dollars into it?
What if the USA bought a football club?
I don’t want to get sucked into a “the US is evil argument” or claims that Trump is a dictator (if he is, he is an amazingly ineffective one). But no country should own any sports team. I’m a dyed-in-the-wool libertarian – I don’t even support any government subsidies or tax breaks for stadiums, never mind government ownership.
Boy oh boy…From the Vietnam War to the Khmer Rouge which led to the eventual rise of Pol Pot, to wars in the Middle East against Iraq and Libya, to the current situation against Iran.
Capitalism at it’s worse, where profits reign over the body count. America is the biggest bully in the playground of the world. The underlying philosophy is only profit and Might makes Right.
As for Trump, well, his obvious refusal to confirm Saudi over Khassoghi’s buffer is just another blot on a stained character.
P.S. – The US armed forces are also the biggest polluters in the world. Biggest contributors to climate change.
As for sources, a cursory Google search should help you.
You mean how the US uses its sports and entertainment industries to protect their reputation, despite killing millions in other countries, appropriating their resources, and weaponising the financial systems to ensure their hegemony over the rest of the world, even as they carry out human rights violations in their own country? Sure.
Yeah, well, I don’t agree with anything you’ve written. Vive le difference.
“appropriating their resources”
Examples?
I don’t know why you bother to ask.
Well the latest example, albeit indirect, is sanctions on Iran, preventing it from selling its oil, unless it…. guess what.. opens up its economy to serve American interests.
See why more countries of the South are wary of IMF. How they take over mines and ports through predatory financing. (Basically the same thing China is now doing with its BRI project, but worse)
Then there’s the hot wars and puppet regimes. See how Iraq’s oil contracts opened up. How Libya’s oil fields now service them. Why they hate Chavez and Putin (both politically very different) for taking back their nation’s oil resources. Why Saudis are allowed to keep theirs. The South American wars to preserve their corporations’ hold over land for agriculture.
It’s got nothing to do with democracy or human rights or whatever. It’s not far removed from the old British play of defining the terms of production, sale, and macro-economic policies of their colonies under cover of bringing good old Christian values to poor savages who can’t take care of themselves. Man, they even recently cited the Monroe doctrine for Venezuela. You know, white man’s burden and all.
Anyway, you asked. Ignore it if you wish. The point is that this veneer of moral superiority based on half truths, lies or even truths, while the US goes on killing innocents for greed sometimes gets on my nerves.
I don’t blame anyone for holding this view. I just wish to present an alternate way of looking at the world, through a non Western lens.
Maybe it is a cool thing to hate on your country in order to be alternative.
But over in the Far East, we have a better appreciation of Trump over the “humanitarian” Obama whose weak sauce approach meant that guys like Putin and Xi have a day out in the sun showing off their guns.
In case you didn’t know, ASEAN was on its way to become a collection of Chinese Satellite states. And lo and behold, Trump got elected. And we got a reprieve.
Though with Trump, you never know. Maybe he will sell us in order to get a “good deal” with China.
And then one day I will need to get a VAN to post on 7am.
Shard:
I know I will never change your mind. Nobody can change anyone’s mind – fact. People must come to their own decisions. You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.
But you speak as though the US was a singular person making strategic (and evil) decisions. That’s a ridiculous oversimplification. And to cite Iran, Chavez, China and Putin as comparison points? Yeah, I will take the US versus those four, all day, every day.
Imagine… Get rid of the racist sexual predator idiot in chief and all that goes away
This kind of comment is why I always kind of side-eye people who are shrillest about Middle Eastern dictatorships.
How Abramovich earned his money is ‘another’ debate? Really? Or is it very much part of the same debate, just artificially partitioned because of god knows what? He made his petro-dollars off of Putin’s cronyism, underwritten by the threat of violence. Real Madrid established their dominance with Franco’s blessing. Barcelona are finally facing tax investigations commensurate to their defrauding of the Spanish state. We’re 13 years removed from Calciopoli, but the idea of Juventus as some sort of underdog is going to take a bit of getting used to.
I hesitate to insinuate things against strangers on the internet, but I do wonder how the completely justified anger against Qatar and the UAE has not forced people to reflect on the long-standing role of ill-gotten wealth and corruption in football.
This includes a starring role for our own ‘Bank of England’ club. Setting aside the fact that the club was founded and chaired for centuries by extremely wealthy businessmen (who will doubtless have some skeletons in their portfolios if any structured study is ever conducted), as well as the charming story of how we bought our way into the original top flight, at least the fact that Kroenke contributed money to the inauguration of that orange oaf should make us hang our heads in shame.
The pretense that human rights violations are the exclusive preserve of everywhere except those lands baptised by the waves of the Atlantic has worn thin. They’re all terrible, and until we discuss this issue without the artifice of ‘club’ ‘loyalty’, we will get exactly the football we deserve.
I completely agree with a lot of what you’re saying.
The only point I don’t necessarily agree with is the idea that Arsenal underhandedly bought their way to promotion that time.
One of the writer’s at Untold did a great write up a couple of years ago that really went into the specifics of it.
I’ll provide a link if I can find it.
Here’s the link.
https://blog.woolwicharsenal.co.uk/archives/5215
Not saying that Arsenal haven’t crossed the line in any way before or since.
It was an interesting read, thanks , although I think not factually very different from most accounts.
It seems to boil down to Arsenal fans saying “well, you can’t prove anything” and Spurs fans insisting that the weird result of the vote speaks for itself.
Either way, I just hope people are keeping these kinds of stories in mind when they profess shock and disgust at the latest scandal.
Timothy’s disillusionment I completely identify with, but the comment above that somehow certain filthy rich clubs are all right just didn’t sit well.
Hear, hear.
So long as you have a club owner who is not sleeping like Kroenke, You will be on top their winning things other wise hehehe, we are finished
Definitely agree on not calling offside on anyone coming back onside. Have felt that way since the Henry and Bergkamp days. Feels unfair somehow.
Var forces line calls to become an issue, I agree. I think the way around it is to give a team one appeal per half to ask for Var. Only the more egregious or more obvious fouls would get referred. If they don’t, teams only have themselves to blame. At most, the game could be slowed down twice per half for incorrect calls. (If the game slows down more, blame the ref for constantly getting it wrong)
Agree on ManCity. Disagree on Fifa and Uefa, I mean, of course they are corrupt. But any organisation which controls that amount of money and influence will be. Eliminating corruption has costs and trade offs. For the most part, Fifa even under Blatter, the most obviously corrupt guy, brought football closer to much of the world previously left out. Again, his motives were wrong. The outcome was good.
This does not mean I agree with all they do. Just acknowledging they do an important job and put out a product people want to watch/be a part of (mostly)
Agree absolutely that the way to limit the effect of VAR is to limit the number of times that an appeal can be made by either team rather than VAR being imposed. As you suggested, once per half could work and if a VAR appeal is correct, the team making the VAR appeal could then make another one in the same half etc until they make a wrong call for VAR. When wrong, no more VAR from them that half.
More importantly than VAR, I do believe that Alexi Lalas is the most serious problem in football now. I had to watch Europa league on a Spanish channel because of his “commentary”. My Spanish is pretty much limited to “cervesa por favor” and “Goooooaaaaaalllllllll.”
Lalas keeps getting hired by the kinds of people who only read resumes and Wikipedia articles, without actually ever having watched the man in action. Remember those ESPN World Cup broadcasts where Roberto Martinez and Michael Ballack came across as elite scholars by simply having Lalas in the same studio?
You know Lalas on air said that he ate dog while in Korea?
I did not know that. Does he live in a perpetual state of non sequitur?
I agree with limiting the Var calls and putting those calls in the hands of the actual teams. Like you say, 2 or 3 per game.
Honestly though, I’m starting to fall out of love with var. In a sport with more straightforward rules I can see it working better, but as Tim suggests, everything’s already open to so much interpretation that i’m not sure that the good outweighs the bad.
I guess the problem with not penalizing offside forwards running away from goal is that it’s possible to still obstruct the keeper’s line of sight or get in people’s way.
Thinking about the goalkeeper penalty rules, wouldn’t it just be easier to allow goalies to move where they want once the taker starts their run up? Like even if they want to charge down the penalty taker they’re opening themselves up for the lob.
It a rule that could be removed entirely while only minimally impacting the takers chance to score.
Agree completely on the corruption and negative impact of money. Another obvious example of this is Neymar…him jumping back and forth between clubs is benefiting almost no-one except for his agent.
On the VAR front, I’m generally in favor of it in theory. It’s good to have an option to fix obviously wrong, game-changing calls. Maradona Hand of God, Lampard’s phantom goal, etc.
But in practice, it’s getting used too much , and for ticky-tack things. Offsides by an inch, or keepers off the line by an inch now. Some of that needs to be addressed by changes in the laws, some by improving how VAR is used.
As far as handball goes, probably needs to be some refinement there as well. It’s kind of bogus to have people getting yellow-carded for inadvertent handballs in the box(like the Japanese player yesterday). And it should still involve some degree of judgement on the part of the referee. For instance, in that same incident yesterday in the JPN-NED match, I thought it was entirely correct to award the penalty. The Japanese player’s arm was away from her body, and it blocked a shot straight on goal that had a pretty high likelihood of going in. And historically, plenty of those would have been called. But if the same thing had happened on a cross from the side edge of the penalty area, I’d be OK with no PK being awarded.
Is Neymar’s dad still his agent?
VAR is overkill to the problem of poor refereeing. Make referees professional, recruit better quality referees and make all referees accountable immediately after a match – imagine if they were forced to do a press conference after matches and then justify their calls on the field. I can’t think of a better corrective/instructional measure.
It used to be that football was resistant to implementing any rule or structural change at the professional level that couldn’t be transposed down to a kids game in some far reach of Angola or Iceland. Not sure why that’s been abandoned.
Too many people (managers, fans, players) wailed too loudly about perceived injustice, and that’s how we got here.
“Also, can we talk about how boring their football is?”
This is actually a huge problem. Football used to be fun. Watching Maldini/Ronaldo/Bergkamp clips on Twitter sometimes, it seems like a very different game (I know highlights are misleading) I wonder if I’d have fallen in love with the game and Arsenal if the game was played (and promoted) this way back then.
It’s kind of why I like watching the Serie A. It’s low quality football, but somehow more entertaining for it. Maybe I should start watching the South American leagues more. Time zone and lack of coverage are issues.
The ref puts a line of foam in front of the defenders after giving a freekick why can’t they put one a yard in front of the goalkeeper for penalties. Clubs should only be allowed to buy 3 or 4 players each window.
On Point One, Ive been totally consumed with the conclusion to a brilliant NBA basketball season.
In the off season, talk is dominated by (a) the draft (b) how much salary cap the Lakers have, now that they’ve burned big money on Anthony Davis*.
In the NBA, teams have spending ceilings. To get money for salary, they have to sell prized assets. And the worst teams get first pick of the best players entering the market.
If the NBA acted like the premier league, the Lakers would have been able to buy AD, Kyrie, Kawhi and Giannis if they had deep pockets billionaire owner. Team Silicon Valley kind of did that whey they got KD, but they were still subject to a cap.
The amazing thing isthat Trump’s America is fairer and more socialist than Europe.
Leaving the money men to dictate is a recipe for financial doping, something on which a useless, ineffective Financial Fair Play has no effect.
Gonna fight you on VAR, though. The tech is new, and everyone’s still figuring it out, and how to use it right. In time they’ll get it right, and realise that it’s there to eliminate marginals, not refs subjective interpretations. Cricket (and tennis to a lesser extent) have perfected it. Give teams appeals, limit appeals, and lose them on bad ones. You’re going to have teams — by themselves — saving them for the truly egregious mistakes.
VAR is not the problem though, is it? Of course, rules are enforced more strictly. But if you think that the outcome is wrong (and I agree), the problem is the rules. VAR has its own issues (time, interruption of play, etc.). But it’s not to blame for the stupid rules, especially regarding handball. If something wasn’t punished before, it was because the refs just didn’t see it and therefore didn’t enforce the rules.
VAR is not perfect and there will certainly be growing pains but I think its needed for the integrity of the game. Its hard to accept that games are sometimes decided by incorrect calls and we have the technology to fix the problem but we are not using it.
Even with VAR there will always be controversy regarding anytime there is subjectivity in how the referee calls a the play Anyone who watches American football is often frustrated by the inconsistency with the way pass interference is called. In European football almost every call is just as subjective as pass interference and because of that some degree inconsistency is inevitable. Even with ultra slow motion replays from 10 different angles there is still disagreement about a lot of calls. However VAR can at least be used to eliminate the clear cut errors which can have an effect n the results. The best example is offsides calls. Its one of the few rules in football which should have zero subjectivity in the way the rule is interpreted.