Soccer Rule Changes

[Gunnerclone]

Because it’s not an accurate number and teams don’t know how much time they have left in the contest. It just makes no sense to just not stop the clock.

The players can ask the ref whenever they want. This is from the youth levels all the way up to the top levels (except HS and college soccer in the US). The players know exactly how much time has gone.

 

[Clonehomer]

Soccer definitely has a flopping problem, like Markus Smart is running training seminar's level. No one gets penalized and VAR hasn't helped deter it, just fixes the result in a very small number of cases. The problem is it's so ingrained in the modern game I don't know how you even begin to actually weed it out.

The only other rule change I'd consider is addressing the time wasting that brings so many good matches to a grinding halt over the last 10 minutes. I think that ones pretty easy, you just introduce a silent count that's enforced by ref's discretion. Keeps them from adding literal "play clocks" or anything similar while allowing the ref leeway in situations where the delays aren't unreasonable.

Soccer is great game to watch because of the flow and pace. There's little to no downtime and the games are relatively short. Fixing those two problems would accentuate those strengths.

That being said i'll watch regardless.

Way to fix the flopping problem is to mandate that a player sits out a minimum of 1 minute when the game is stopped for their injury.

 

[BryceC]

Never understood how this can bother people so much.

It’s abused. Studies have shown home teams get more time when they are down. Adds human ref failure to the mix when there is no need.