Like most of you, I have been enjoying watching the World Cup for the past week or so…. with the sound off of course! This is clearly the best sporting event in the World but a few changes really need to be made.
I’m not quite sure why the clock can’t just stop when a player is injured. The fact that time is added to the end of a game and the only one in the whole stadium who knows it is the referee, is messed up! Either the referee should stop the clock when there is a definite need or have the time keeper add the exact time to the end of the game. The referee has a microphone on his head the entire game….who’s he talking to anyway? I’m pretty certain that when the 90 minutes is up he could whisper in his microphone ”please add 3 minutes.” This probably would not be too hard to do.
While we’re talking about the referee, why can’t there be 2 referees, one on each half of the field? There is just no physical way for the referee to make a good judgment call with the distance that he’s away from the play. After all, he can’t possibly be able to watch all 22 men on the field. Give the guy some help!
Let’s talk about the red card. When a referee has the power to throw a player out of the game, he in effect is changing the dynamics of the whole game. This foul should clearly be flagrant to everyone. I’m not saying that there isn’t a need for the red card but it should be used in only the most severe cases. I also have a problem with the yellow cards. Why do yellow cards get carried on from one match to another? Can you imagine what would happen if they tried that in a sport like basketball? It just doesn’t make sense! If a player receives two yellows in a game I do understand having him sit for the remainder of the game but why the carry over rule? That’s a rule they can definitely get rid of!
Why can’t the referee’s be scrutinized during or after the game, especially after a bad call? They should have to be accountable to someone! For plays that have resulted in a goal, all offside plays or penalty’s should be reviewable by replay…these games are just too important to have a game decided by a bad call! Case in point, USA vs. Slovenia.
Soccer is a great sport! They just need to add a couple of common sense rules to make it better!
