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Let's make football more beautiful
Published: Sunday | November 27, 2011
Usain Bolt
Lionel Messi
Roger Federer
Tiger Woods
1 2 3 4 >
Tony Becca, FROM THE BOUNDARY
Sport is a wonderful thing, and depending on your preference, every sport, each sport, is a thing of beauty.
To some people there is nothing as satisfying, for example, as a man racing down the track, nothing as elegant as a man, or woman, hitting a tennis ball, nothing as skilful as a man swinging at a golf ball, nothing as picturesque as a woman jumping and catching a netball, nothing as beautiful as a man dribbling a football, and to some others, there is nothing like the sight of a man stroking a ball through the covers, or looping a googly past the inside edge of a bat, or of a batsman pivoting and hooking a screaming bouncer to the backward square-leg boundary.
It is even better, the feeling more satisfying, when it is a Usain Bolt, a Roger Federer or a Serena Williams, a Tiger Woods, a Patricia McDonald, a Lionel Messi, a Garry Sobers, a Shane Warne, a Geoff Thomson, or someone of their exceptional class in action.
Sport is something glorious and exciting to behold, and even more so when the men, or women, in action, the men and women doing what sometimes seems the impossible, are the best exponents of the respective skills of the games on show.
the best invention
Sport, every sport and any sport, is one of the best inventions of man. It is fair to every man because it is controlled by rules, rules made to suit each sport, and over the years, the rules have been followed, to the best of man's ability, by the men called upon by other men to be their guardian, to see that sport is played according to the specific rules.
Those rules have served the world for generations, but time has caught up with them, and for this generation, and for others to come, there needs to be changes.
Changes are now necessary because of the importance of winning, because of more competition and more money, because people have become less tolerant these days, and because of the need to simply change with the times because it is the right thing to do.
Because of technology, it is now possible to do so.
The changes I am referring to involves football, only football at this time, and thank God, these suggested changes would not change the game in any way, in any drastic way, and they certainly would not change the game from being the "beautiful" game that it is to millions and millions of fans.
First off, football, from it was first invented, was a game of 11 players per team, but because of the rules and the penalties it can be 11 versus 10, or 11 versus nine, or even 10 versus 10, or nine versus nine when one or two players, for example, are sent off for an infringement or two of the rules.
It would seem only fair, and in keeping with 11 versus 11, that when a player commits himself he be sent off only for a time, for five minutes or 10 minutes depending on the nature of the offence.
It would be similar, for example, to ice hockey.
If this is not done, we may one day see six footballers on each side playing out a football match.
yellow card
Secondly, the use of the 'yellow card' is becoming too frequent. Referees seem to hand out the 'yellow card' for every offence, every foul, instead of for the premeditated or really dangerous ones as it was intended; and thirdly, why give a 'red card' and a 'penalty' whenever a goalkeeper fouls an attacker?
This seems like a double whammy for the attacking team.
A 'penalty' almost all the time ends up in a goal, and to give a 'penalty' and then send the goalkeeper off the field is a bit too much.
The 'penalty', it seems, is penalty enough.
The fourth and final change would be the use of goal line technology to determine when a goal is scored or when a goal is not scored.
In this day and age, when two teams of evenly-matched skills play against each other a goal is like gold, it is hard to come by, and the game must find a way to deal with close calls, to rule when a goal is a goal and when a 'goal' is not a goal.
I once saw, on television, in 2004, a match between Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur at Old Trafford, the match was 0-0 going into the final minutes, United were pressuring Spurs, and suddenly the ball came out to Pedro Mendez, playing for Spurs, he picked it up at the halfway line, darted away, looked up, saw the United goalkeeper, Roy Carroll, way off his line, and shot towards the goal.
Until this day I can still see the goalkeeper struggling to get back, lounging at the ball as it hit the back of the net, knocking it out of the goal, and the referee, who along with the linesmen or referee's assistants, were following the play and way up the field, signalling 'no-goal'.
I could not believe what I had seen, and from then until now, I have always believed in goal line technology in order to get the correct call most of the time.
The changes, as suggested, would certainly make football, top class football, not only the beautiful game, but along with tennis and track and field, probably the best of sport as far as getting it right and as far as rules are concerned.
http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/2.../sports51.html
Published: Sunday | November 27, 2011
Usain Bolt
Lionel Messi
Roger Federer
Tiger Woods
1 2 3 4 >
Tony Becca, FROM THE BOUNDARY
Sport is a wonderful thing, and depending on your preference, every sport, each sport, is a thing of beauty.
To some people there is nothing as satisfying, for example, as a man racing down the track, nothing as elegant as a man, or woman, hitting a tennis ball, nothing as skilful as a man swinging at a golf ball, nothing as picturesque as a woman jumping and catching a netball, nothing as beautiful as a man dribbling a football, and to some others, there is nothing like the sight of a man stroking a ball through the covers, or looping a googly past the inside edge of a bat, or of a batsman pivoting and hooking a screaming bouncer to the backward square-leg boundary.
It is even better, the feeling more satisfying, when it is a Usain Bolt, a Roger Federer or a Serena Williams, a Tiger Woods, a Patricia McDonald, a Lionel Messi, a Garry Sobers, a Shane Warne, a Geoff Thomson, or someone of their exceptional class in action.
Sport is something glorious and exciting to behold, and even more so when the men, or women, in action, the men and women doing what sometimes seems the impossible, are the best exponents of the respective skills of the games on show.
the best invention
Sport, every sport and any sport, is one of the best inventions of man. It is fair to every man because it is controlled by rules, rules made to suit each sport, and over the years, the rules have been followed, to the best of man's ability, by the men called upon by other men to be their guardian, to see that sport is played according to the specific rules.
Those rules have served the world for generations, but time has caught up with them, and for this generation, and for others to come, there needs to be changes.
Changes are now necessary because of the importance of winning, because of more competition and more money, because people have become less tolerant these days, and because of the need to simply change with the times because it is the right thing to do.
Because of technology, it is now possible to do so.
The changes I am referring to involves football, only football at this time, and thank God, these suggested changes would not change the game in any way, in any drastic way, and they certainly would not change the game from being the "beautiful" game that it is to millions and millions of fans.
First off, football, from it was first invented, was a game of 11 players per team, but because of the rules and the penalties it can be 11 versus 10, or 11 versus nine, or even 10 versus 10, or nine versus nine when one or two players, for example, are sent off for an infringement or two of the rules.
It would seem only fair, and in keeping with 11 versus 11, that when a player commits himself he be sent off only for a time, for five minutes or 10 minutes depending on the nature of the offence.
It would be similar, for example, to ice hockey.
If this is not done, we may one day see six footballers on each side playing out a football match.
yellow card
Secondly, the use of the 'yellow card' is becoming too frequent. Referees seem to hand out the 'yellow card' for every offence, every foul, instead of for the premeditated or really dangerous ones as it was intended; and thirdly, why give a 'red card' and a 'penalty' whenever a goalkeeper fouls an attacker?
This seems like a double whammy for the attacking team.
A 'penalty' almost all the time ends up in a goal, and to give a 'penalty' and then send the goalkeeper off the field is a bit too much.
The 'penalty', it seems, is penalty enough.
The fourth and final change would be the use of goal line technology to determine when a goal is scored or when a goal is not scored.
In this day and age, when two teams of evenly-matched skills play against each other a goal is like gold, it is hard to come by, and the game must find a way to deal with close calls, to rule when a goal is a goal and when a 'goal' is not a goal.
I once saw, on television, in 2004, a match between Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur at Old Trafford, the match was 0-0 going into the final minutes, United were pressuring Spurs, and suddenly the ball came out to Pedro Mendez, playing for Spurs, he picked it up at the halfway line, darted away, looked up, saw the United goalkeeper, Roy Carroll, way off his line, and shot towards the goal.
Until this day I can still see the goalkeeper struggling to get back, lounging at the ball as it hit the back of the net, knocking it out of the goal, and the referee, who along with the linesmen or referee's assistants, were following the play and way up the field, signalling 'no-goal'.
I could not believe what I had seen, and from then until now, I have always believed in goal line technology in order to get the correct call most of the time.
The changes, as suggested, would certainly make football, top class football, not only the beautiful game, but along with tennis and track and field, probably the best of sport as far as getting it right and as far as rules are concerned.
http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/2.../sports51.html
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