TheGro Blog

I’ve been wanting to type this up for a long while, but since The FA announced their latest innitiative ‘Repect’ it has inspired me to write something down on my views. All these initiatives are all very well, but lets face it they don’t work, and never will because the players are ignorant, stupid and hold too much power in the modern game.

The whole concept of football is based on cheating, deceiving the referee and money, and its an ugly game because of it. The powers that be, namely The FA, FIFA and UEFA could have nipped this in the bud years ago and the game that we watch today would be much better for it.

In all my years of watching sport, football  has to be the most ridiculous over-hyped and infuriating game of the bunch, and to make it back to the game I once enjoyed would take a few simple steps:

1) Referees and the rules: CONSISTENCY.

There are way to many rules that are open to interpretation, was the player ‘interfering’ with play for example. If he is offside, he is offside, lets get rid of this ‘he was facing the other way’, ‘was coming back from an offside position’. NO, he was offside, freekick. The Governing bodies need to make sure these are enforced and back their referees.  Apply the rules, the actual rules not an interpretation of the rule, the ACTUAL rule.

2) The players: HONESTY.

This is where the whole game is ruined in my book and is a plague on the sport itself. Im sick of seeing players pretending to be injured, diving to ‘win’ fouls (and get opponents sent off), and badgering referees in packs. Its a complete and utter lack of respect and a joke. To make it worse its so blatantly obvious what they’re are doing its laughable. Sky Sports must take dozens of cameras to a football match they’re covering so all these incidents are scrutinised and seen from several different angles, so a player launching themselves on the floor after not being touched and roll around clutching their ankles and shins is a complete embarrassment. Do they not feel ashamed of themselves once they’ve seen the replays on TV?

A pack of players shouting ‘HEY AY AY HEY HEY’ with expressions of complete rage on their faces whilst all them are stood 12 inches from the ref needs to be punished, here comes that ‘respect’ word again, only the captain should be able to address the referee in regards to an on field decision. If a decsition goes against you I don’t want to see a player shout ‘FUCK OFF” to the ref, they should be sent off for crap like that. You only have to look at other sports for an example of how respecting the referee can work, namely Rugby League and the NFL.

Also the little things are getting stupid, if Team A gets a throw in, a player from Team B cant even leave the ball alone, he has to throw it over the player wanting to take the throw, or he taps it 3 yards to his side. On a similar situation is if Team A gets a freekick, some player from team B stands in front off the ball or pretend he was running that way anyway, Just get the hell out of the way or be booked.

Pinching yards is another annoyance, if a team is awarded a throw in, then the player taking it shouldn’t be allowed to move forward of that position, stop all the ‘pulling out’ of the throw, in essence walking 10yards further up the pitch from where its supposed to be taken from, or alternatively doing all that then give ball to another player to take the throw, who then gains another 5 yards. The referee needs to specify where the throw should be taken from, and NO FURTHER forward, or the players get booked. The same applies to free kicks, the skidding of the ball with some backspin to move ball several yards forward several times is stupid. Look at the NFL, 22 players end up in a pile on the floor with the ball in the middle, they all get themselves up on their feet, yes they help their opponents up too and every one of them steps over and leaves the ball alone, letting the referee get it and place it where it needs to be to carry on with the game, no messing about

Lets look at yet another scenario, Team A get a free kick outside the penalty box, the referee paces out the required yardage that Team B have to stand at. The ref turns his back and gets into his position, Team B shuffle 2 yards forward, the referee escorts them back and once again they shuffle forwards. This is all wasting time, if the referee needs to book all 7 players in the wall, then book them all. The players are breaking the rules by not staying the correct distance from the ball, they wont do it again if they are booked every time. Its not difficult, and they would soon learn about respecting the rules if half the team cant play because of suspension.

Commentators and pundits as well as ex-players don’t help the situation with comments like ‘he’s been clever there and ‘gone to ground’. What kind of statement is that? Gone to ground, in my book means he has dived, being touched by an opponent is not a foul and certain doesn’t warrant throwing your self on the floor, football is a physical sport, so you’re going to get contact, and not every instance of this means you fall over like you’ve been shot. Its so obvious its laughable and UEFA were meant to clamp down on this years ago, and like everything the governing bodies are powerless and weak and wont enforce it, its just lip service.

3) Technology:

How hard can it be to use a replay to decide if the ball crossed the line or not? Im sick of hearing all the crap about it slowing the game down, it wont slow it anymore than the current system where all the players and management screaming and arguing about it for 10mins. They can manage to use a system called Hawkeye in Tennis and Cricket for seeing if the ball was out, or was going to hit the wickets or not respectively. The ball is much small and faster (in most cases) in those sports, so applying it to football really cant be difficult. But instead the governing body wont implement it, but instead mess about by using a couple of extra officials on the goal line

4) Money:

There needs to be a cap on wages, how can you justify a player earning £250k a week? its obscene, even the top teams are millions and millions of pounds in debt just to pay these players, how can players as employees of a team earn more than the manager and chairman? its like me walking into a job in an office and earning more money than the Managing Director / CEO, it makes no logical sense. It would also be nice to see players honour their contracts, because as it stands the contracts aren’t worth the paper they’re written on. A player signs a new 4 year contract in November worth more than his existing one, come January he signs for the flavour of the month club attracting a signing on fee, and his contract with his now former club goes in the bin. Pointless.

5) Sepp Blatter

He hasn’t a clue.

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You may think Im one of those people that doesn’t like football, which isn’t the case. I have supported Leeds United since I was a kid, and yes I was gutted when they got relegated from the Premier League after the times we were playing the likes of the Barcelona and Lazio etc in the Champions League. But now they are in the Championship and pushing for promotion I’m hoping they don’t actually get promoted because I think that the Premier League has got worse and is the root cause of all the problems I’ve listed so far, albeit easy ones to fix. I feel football is a much better game outside of the Premier League without the obscene amount of cash and bullshit thats associated with it, i.e. two teams playing a GAME of football.

Stop the huge wages, give the authority back to the referees and governing bodies and away from agents, managers and lawyers, in a nutshell make football a sport and a game again.