Second Captains Part II

Football anoraks hate this one weird trick

Gareth Southgate

Dale Johnson from ESPN explains why the curucella incident wasn’t a penalty. He’s a good follow for people who want to know the current rules of the game.

People obviously have issues with the handball rule but they blame the officials when what they want is a different rule.

It’s been a fantastic Euros.

It’s also funny to hear Ken’s sneering about Don Diego’s takes only for him to then earnestly repeat them after having to watch Bellingham in person for a few weeks.

Oh look, a hung parliament and Macrons centerist alliance came 2nd. What a shocker…

What happened to the comfortable majority?

"hung parliament" is a nonsensical and exclusively British concept.

Looks like Phillipe was spot on with his prediction and I was right to trust the early polls.

Right wing nuts weren’t even the biggest party.

The Euros started well, but from the second round onwards has been getting worse with each set of games.

I see it's on the RTE player now too. Will check it out this evening.

The teams are looking tired. A time to talk about improving the game?

Bring in rolling subs? I know the Dutch FA are proposing this. It would allow the coaching staff to change tactics more quickly and give the players more of a rest. Older players could have longer careers.

Bring in kick-ins instead of throw-ins, with the kicks having to be taken within 20 seconds or so. They'd probably need to make corners more attacking to compensate - like not allowing any player (except for the defending GK) inside the penalty area before a corner is taken or taking the corner from a different infield position.

Also, a sin bin would be a good idea for cynical play - fouls that clearly prevents an attacking opportunity or diving. Often these fouls go unpunished during the game in which the foul is committed. There is no benefit to the opposing team if a player prevents a goal scoring chance and is banned for the next game through multiple yellow cards (in cup competitions anyway).

Get rid of off-side. It was abandoned in other sports. I strongly believe the disadvantages of offside outweigh the advantages. It stops players and fans from celebrating goals in the moment because they're always worried a goal may be offside. It's also very contentious and nearly impossible to get every decision right throughout a game at amateur level without technology. It would be much easier to referee a game without it. It would spread out the play.

Get rid of VAR. The games should be same game, from the bottom of the amateur leagues right through to professional levels. Again, it kills goals from being celebrated in the moment.

Some people do very badly with any sort of change.

Underage football already has kick-ins, no off-side and rolling subs. It's fine.

Edit: And no VAR of course. Once off-side is introduced at U12, the games become unfair. Half the games are decided by very hard to call off-side decisions and it is an impossible task for referees to get these right.

Other than Spain and Germany, it's been the bigger nations, some of which are still in the tournament, that have been stinking the place out with awful football. France could get to a final without scoring a goal in open play.

The only really good games that i can recall, involved Germany, Spain, Austria, Georgia and Turkey.

Didi Hamann made the point that they should go ahead and make it a 32 team tournament, as it's the smaller countries that were really having a go in games and getting stuck in. That would also get rid of the rather annoying thing of the best 3rd place teams getting through. However, it wasn't annoying when it was us going through in 3rd back in 2016.