The Laws of the Game — time for an update?

Some of the laws of football are outdated. They were developed and first codified — arbitrarily — over 150 years ago to administer a developing game. Almost everything else about the game has changed immeasurably in the intervening time, but the laws that govern the game have remained steadfastly protected. Some minor additions have been made and revisions carried out, but the core fundamentals of the laws have been considered sacrosanct and untouchable in perpetuity.

The laws, as they currently exist, make for a great game — myself and billions worldwide adore the game of football — but that doesn’t mean they’re perfect. And it doesn’t mean the game couldn’t be improved through appropriate revisions.

I think it’s time we loosen the binding that’s so tightly suffocated the laws of the game over the past century and a half and open them up to a much wider review, the likes of which hasn’t been done since the late nineteenth century.

For those of you worried I’m proposing we completely tear up the rulebook and introduce triangular goalposts and fourteen-player teams, relax, that’s not where this is going. The essence of the game is, and should remain, sacrosanct. What I’m proposing is a few updates I’d like to be considered that deal with how we govern the playing of the game on the pitch (i.e. within the existing structure of the game).

I’m specifically interested here in the realm of punishment and reward, and the focus will be on fouls and offsides. I’m interested in finding ways to more suitably penalise and reward infractions during play, as I believe this area is increasingly tainting the game we love.

Fouls

I’ve found myself becoming increasingly frustrated with the ineffectiveness of the yellow card, at its nothingness. It does exactly nothing by way of delivering a penalty, and its only real purpose is as a final warning to deter a player from making any further serious fouls. It doesn’t even prevent a player from committing further fouls — many a ‘minor’ foul goes unpunished after the issuing of a yellow card. As long as the player refrains from committing any further serious infractions the yellow card (and thus the fouls they’ve committed) is worth nothing thereafter (save for the handful of players that accumulate enough yellow cards to earn a suspension).

For a defending player a yellow card is a genuinely great trade-off for committing a cynical foul that halts a dangerous break. The opposing team are awarded a freekick in a neutral area of the pitch, far away from being any immediate danger, whilst the perpetrator receives a yellow card — a final warning, but no immediate punishment. The foul going unpunished here is the gaping hole in the laws that I want to address.

To redress the ineffectiveness of the yellow card and to rectify the shortcoming of fouls not being penalised adequately, I’m proposing the introduction of foul counts should be considered and yellow cards scrapped altogether. The overarching reason behind the proposal is that every foul impacts the game and therefore should be penalised accordingly, and yellow cards and freekicks on the half-way line are not providing appropriate penalties to make this true. The introduction of personal and team foul limits would ensure that every foul has a consequence and is accounted for accordingly.

The proposal then, is to introduce a team foul limit of four fouls per half and a personal foul limit of three per match. These would function as below.

Personal Fouls

· A foul limit of three per player, per match

· A fourth foul sees the player ejected from the game (they may be replaced with a substitute if the team has any substitutions remaining)

· A player that exceeds the three-foul limit will be suspended for the subsequent game

· An additional one-game suspension will be applied if a player accumulates 24 fouls across any 19-game period

· Diving/simulation and deliberate handballs will contribute towards foul counts

· Two personal fouls will be awarded for fouls deemed to be deliberate, dangerous, or reckless

Team Fouls

· A foul limit of four per team, per half

· The opposition team will be awarded a ‘lower xG penalty kick’ for every foul over the team foul limit

· Red cards will contribute two fouls towards a team’s foul count (only one penalty kick can be gained as a result of each red card issued)

The new laws would see players with a personal foul limit of three fouls per match, with a fourth foul resulting in ejection from the game and suspension for the subsequent game. A foul limit of three provides players with enough freedom so as not to be unduly punished for making a mistake but is also stringent enough to act as a reasonable deterrent (especially with regards to ‘minor’ fouls and tactical/cynical fouls). However, in isolation, a three-foul personal limit would be far too lenient to achieve an overall reduction in the volume of fouls, hence the need to couple it with a team foul limit.

With the ambition to bring about a reduction in the volume of fouls in the game I’d propose placing the team foul limit at four per half. At a theoretical limit of eight per game, per team, this places the upper limit below the current Premier League average of 20.9 fouls per game (roughly 10 per team). Enforcing the foul limit on a per-half basis should help further reduce the total foul count (it seems unlikely that every team maxes out their foul limit in every half of every game), and crucially, prevent teams from feeling like they can ‘use up’ the fouls they still have ‘remaining’ towards the end of games.

Red cards would remain unchanged but would additionally contribute two fouls towards a team’s foul count. As is currently the case, players receiving a red card would continue to be removed from the game and face a subsequent ban. Ejections for breaching the personal foul limit would similarly see players removed from the game and banned for a subsequent fixture, but unlike with red cards, players ‘fouling-out’ would be permitted to be replaced with a substitute player so long as the team has at least one substitution remaining. The driving principle behind this difference is the desire to not adversely impact the game through players ‘fouling-out’, and therefore, to try and retain 22 players on the pitch as far as is possible. A sin-bin style penalty period could be introduced, but the penalty seems too mild and would only encourage teams to shut-up-shop and defend in order to weather the duration of the penalty.

Finally, under the principle that every foul matters and needs to be accounted for, a rolling 24-foul personal limit across any 19-game stretch should also apply, adding a further layer of deterrent to the 3-per-game personal foul limit. Breaching the 24-foul limit would invoke a one-game suspension.

Penalties

The penalties for breaching personal foul limits are all player-centric and result in ejections and suspensions. The penalty for breaching the team foul limit, naturally, can’t be player-focused and therefore needs to penalise the team as a collective. Short of creating the handicap of playing with one less player, the only other obvious means of penalisation is to award the opposing team with a goal-scoring attempt. A penalty kick from 12 yards (0.76 xG) would be too severe a punishment in a game that sees an average of only 2.7 goals per game, and a freekick would be too light a punishment given the rarity with which they’re converted into goals (~2%). Therefore, the solution must be some middle ground between the two — of which, currently, nothing exists.

For that reason, I’m proposing the introduction of a penalty kick from a lower xG location than the current 12-yard spot. The exact location of this spot (as with all other proposals in this piece) should be thoroughly researched and tested prior to implementation to ensure a location is selected that serves as a suitable deterrent and punishment, but doesn’t reward the opposition with too favourable a goal-scoring opportunity. Would a 0.45 xG opportunity be a fair penalty? Or 0.4 xG? What would the average conversion rate of a penalty from 14 yards be?

A sampling period in the Premier League Under-23s — akin to the trial programme employed by MLB in the minor leagues for testing proposed new laws — would be the perfect environment for experimenting with new laws and collecting a sample of data to help inform the most appropriate location for an additional penalty spot. (Let’s not go into the efficacy of the 12-yard spot for today).

As well as being the punishment for exceeding the team foul limit, I’d also like to see a lower xG penalty introduced for all fouls that take place within the penalty area, with traditional penalties from 12 yards being reserved exclusively for fouls that take place in the act of shooting or in creating a goal-scoring opportunity (within the penalty area). This would ensure we retain a severe and just penalty for preventing a goal-scoring opportunity, but it would also serve to lessen the penalty for fouls in less-threatening situations, whilst still rewarding the attacking team with a goal-scoring opportunity earnt from their success at advancing into the penalty area.

I’d like to see an additional stipulation added for both types of penalty kick: making it a true dead ball situation. Once the ball has been kicked the play is dead, meaning no rebounds are permitted. The result of a penalty kick would either be a goal or the restarting of play from a goalkick. An attempt at a 0.76 xG opportunity is reward enough, without providing a potential second opportunity if the first attempt is saved.

Offside

The other major area of the game that I think needs updating as it’s no longer fit for purpose, is the offside law. I would argue it’s been unsuitable for a long time, but has become acutely problematic since the introduction of VAR. The offside law in its current guise is outdated and needs fixing.

My primary issue with the offside law is that it was introduced with a primary purpose in mind and that purpose has been so far distorted that it no longer bears any resemble to its initial intention.

Initially introduced as a means by which to prevent attacking players staking-out a permanent spot by the goal, the offside law has now become a militantly enforced act of soulless precision, flagging every single infraction no matter how minute. The biggest issue with VAR was, and remains, that it’s been introduced to adjudicate on a law that is not designed to be so precise. But with the technology in place, we have almost no option but to enforce it with the level of precision that VAR makes possible. Hence, the law needed revising beforehand, and certainly needs revising now.

I have two principles that have guided my thinking on the offside law. The first — and this is one that made my blood boil with every marginal offside call last season — is that a player should not be flagged for being offside unless they can know, in the moment, that they are in an offside position. It seems wrong to me for a player to be flagged for an infringement they cannot conceivably have knowledge of committing. After all, if a player was somehow capable of being aware of being ‘offside’ by 3mm, you can guarantee they would adjust those 3mm to get back onside and forego the tiniest of advantages those 3 extra millimetres was giving them (see how ridiculous this law is?). The additional element worth considering here is the dynamism of the game. At any given moment there are 22 players on the pitch moving in different directions and at different speeds and therefore to measure anything in such an environment to such a minute level of detail is just, quite frankly, wrong. And absurd. I don’t think I can emphasise enough just how pathetic it is that we’ve managed to get to a point where we scrutinise the offside law down to the millimetre.

The second principle is that I can’t think of a single reason why it actually matters if an attacker is a few inches in front of all of the defenders when the ball is played forward. Sure, a few yards or more causes issues, but really the offside law was never designed to prevent a player from gaining a half-yard head start. Nevertheless, we’re left with a law that does penalise such a situation, the collateral effect of an ill-defined law, whose deficiencies are now relentlessly dissected and dramatised by a world of unforgiving technology and a gluttonous entertainment industry.

With these principles in mind, I’d like to see a revision to the offside law that would require a player’s whole body to be clearly (increasing the degree of certainty required and deliberately adding imprecision) in front of a second opposition player for them to be considered in an offside position. This would immediately switch the emphasis to punishing only major infractions and would go a long way to rectifying the painful state of affairs that currently play out across the game every week.

Even if VAR were to remain in play under new laws, such a revision would make the marginal calls considerably more palatable. And even then, I’d still like to see a much greater margin of error applied when using VAR.

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I’m under no illusions that these proposals are perfect, and I would absolutely insist upon rigorous research and testing should the laws of the game ever be revised in such a manner. But I’d love to see proposals like these considered, and more broadly, the laws of the game to be explored with a more critical eye. There’s so much about the game that’s amazing, but a handful of rules and practices are so arbitrary and outdated, yet we persist with them without any genuine reasons for doing so.