MATCH THREAD: Spain Vs. Italy - Euro 2012 Final - Sunday 7:45 KO

[ScouseBlueBoy]

Technically gifted and individually brilliant

I would say 'technically brilliant and individually gifted'.

 

[davek]

what would you change Dave ?

I'd introduce dwarf throwing into football.

Seriously, though, improving matters wouldn't take a re-writing of the laws of the game. It's just about shifting the bias in interpretation. There should be a directive that the coming together of players in a non-dangerous manner hardly ever merits a booking. Refs tend to card persistent 'offenders' who make a handful of attempts to get at a ball that they cant make it to and the screening player in possession goes to ground. You see that all the time every week: refs pointing to three places on the pitch where 'the offender' has caught opposition players before 'the lenient' ref cards them...then the next one comes out later and they're off the pitch! It's a complete travesty of justice. It cowers (as it was designed to do, by the way) players from exerting pressure on a team that thrives on possession. In other words, there has to be a shift in balance whereby the pressuring/tackling player is given the benefit of the doubt in trying to cleanly take the ball from the opposition. At the moment the bias is the other way: any player who makes a few honest attempts to win the ball that they haven't been able to and the player in possession goes to ground refs will punish it with a card, and the strategy of a team can be immediately undone as they guard against a dismissal and so they're onto a less fancied Plan B. It calls for a good judge of intent, but the mindset of refs should always err in favour of not giving cards for multiple small offences (for example, when feet get tangled or when a stab at the ball which gets quickly whipped away brings a player to ground).

And there's no need to go back to the hacking of a by-gone era either. Anything at all deemed violent would be carded. You could maybe even have the one straight red card for violence and skip the yellow - whic at present can be used for less violent offences than the one that eventually has someone sent off!

If just that simple mindset shift were adopted the game would produce very different outcomes for various ways of playing the game and very different results also.

Football should never lose its contact element. Its in danger of producing an anodyne, neutered and barely watchable game that interests only the statistics obsessed, middle class bores who've never kicked a ball in their lives. The game needs to be grabbed back from those tvvats.

 

[Pat's Van]

I'd introduce dwarf throwing into football.

Seriously, though, improving matters wouldn't take a re-writing of the laws of the game. It's just about shifting the bias in interpretation. There should be a directive that the coming together of players in a non-dangerous manner hardly ever merits a booking. Refs tend to card persistent 'offenders' who make a handful of attempts to get at a ball that they cant make it to and the screening player in possession goes to ground. You see that all the time every week: refs pointing to three places on the pitch where 'the offender' has caught opposition players before 'the lenient' ref cards them...then the next one comes out later and they're off the pitch! It's a complete travesty of justice. It cowers (as it was designed to do, by the way) players from exerting pressure on a team that thrives on possession. In other words, there has to be a shift in balance whereby the pressuring/tackling player is given the benefit of the doubt in trying to cleanly take the ball from the opposition. At the moment the bias is the other way: any player who makes a few honest attempts to win the ball that they haven't been able to and the player in possession goes to ground refs will punish it with a card, and the strategy of a team can be immediately undone as they guard against a dismissal and so they're onto a less fancied Plan B. It calls for a good judge of intent, but the mindset of refs should always err in favour of not giving cards for multiple small offences (for example, when feet get tangled or when a stab at the ball which gets quickly whipped away brings a player to ground).

And there's no need to go back to the hacking of a by-gone era either. Anything at all deemed violent would be carded. You could maybe even have the one straight red card for violence and skip the yellow - whic at present can be used for less violent offences than the one that eventually has someone sent off!

If just that simple mindset shift were adopted the game would produce very different outcomes for various ways of playing the game and very different results also.

Football should never lose its contact element. Its in danger of producing an anodyne, neutered and barely watchable game that interests only the statistics obsessed, middle class bores who've never kicked a ball in their lives. The game needs to be grabbed back from those tvvats.

good points mate, tell me more about this dwarf throwing