At its Annual Business Meeting (ABM) held in London on Tuesday, IFAB focused on measures to improve participant behaviour in football and increase respect for match officials; it was agreed sin bins for dissent and specific tactical offences should be trialled at higher levels
It’s not really another way though is it? Or rather, or it’s not adding more decisions to be made. Previously it was “Do I give this person a a yellow or nothing for saying that to me” and now it’s “Do I give this person an orange or nothing for saying that to me”.
In that specific situation you almost feel like the hypothetical orange card for a sin bin could work like so:
orange, yellow = off
yellow, orange = sin bin
orange, orange = sin bin
and a third orange is always a red
This way referees who worry about being blamed for “ruining the game” with an early double yellow might punish players/teams where they’d otherwise find any excuse to avoid the second yellow.
This really would allow for more inconsistent decisions but it would facilitate punishing behaviours that ought to be punished but which routinely go unpunished.
The rules (“Laws” I know) keep getting written to be more objective, but the pursuit of objectivity is foolish when a lot of the decisions are always going to be subjective. Increasing the level of subjective discretion could actually make refs feel empowered to make calls they’re otherwise hesitant to make because everything is so binary and clashes with the human element. Or it might not, but the situation now definitely needs fixing somehow… all that can go wrong is a different wrong.
It’s not a bad idea in principle, but it’s just another way for officials to make inconsistent decisions.
100% and another variable to bet on
VARiable
And without “net play time” it’s gonna be even MORE inconsistent. Some players will lose like 2 minutes of actual game play, while other may lose 8/9…
It’s not really another way though is it? Or rather, or it’s not adding more decisions to be made. Previously it was “Do I give this person a a yellow or nothing for saying that to me” and now it’s “Do I give this person an orange or nothing for saying that to me”.
In that specific situation you almost feel like the hypothetical orange card for a sin bin could work like so:
This way referees who worry about being blamed for “ruining the game” with an early double yellow might punish players/teams where they’d otherwise find any excuse to avoid the second yellow.
This really would allow for more inconsistent decisions but it would facilitate punishing behaviours that ought to be punished but which routinely go unpunished.
The rules (“Laws” I know) keep getting written to be more objective, but the pursuit of objectivity is foolish when a lot of the decisions are always going to be subjective. Increasing the level of subjective discretion could actually make refs feel empowered to make calls they’re otherwise hesitant to make because everything is so binary and clashes with the human element. Or it might not, but the situation now definitely needs fixing somehow… all that can go wrong is a different wrong.
And for VAR to fuck up.