Ways to Make Football a Better Game

1) Put a Stop to Diving. This is, without a doubt, what I hate the most about the game. I hate how faking an injury has been turned into a crucial element of the sport, at least for some players and teams. Let players know that this will no longer be tolerated and players acting out injuries will be punished. Period. How can this be achieved? There are a lot of things that could be done but #4 on this list would help solve the problem.

2) Make Offside Calls Electronic. I don’t think that I’ve ever seen a game in which there wasn’t at least one bad offside call, the bad call may not have affected the game in any way but it’s still a bad call. We already have the technology in place because on TV we see it immediately. The human eye is not capable of seeing two different points on the field at the same time. With an electronic call flags would go up and a whistle would blow to end the play. No flags and no whistles mean no call and play proceeds.

3) Make Defense More Difficult. If there is one damn thing the sport needs it’s more goals. If there were more goals there would be less of a chance that a single bad call by the referee would ruin a game. The easiest way to hinder the defender is to make it an immediate expulsion to hold on to another player, either by grabbing their uniform or a part of their body. It’s not like players actually pull on someone’s jersey by accident so there shouldn’t be any crying when there is an expulsion for this. Corner kicks would be a lot easier to score if this were enforced.

4) Two 45 Minute Halves. No injury time and when the clock runs out the game is over unless the ball is in the air flying towards the goal. If a player is injured the play continues. If a player needs to be taken off the field then the ref can stop the clock and restart it when play resumes so that everyone knows exactly how much time is left in the game. I have seen games with 10 minutes tacked on to the end and countless games when play just seems to go on forever even after it should have stopped simply because one team is threatening to score. This rule would cut down a lot on diving because there wouldn’t be time for the phony drama as play wouldn’t stop due to someone flopping.  If play is halted because of an injury then the injured player must sit on the sidelines for five minutes or be substituted. The clock means so little in football that I don’t know why they bother with it at all.