Freepik.
Morning all.
The Club World Cup – a nonsense competition at the end of a long season which I’m glad Arsenal Football Club are not taking part in. I would imagine a lot of club managers wish their players were either, after all, a lot have already featured in international fixtures this month.
What this competition is going to do though is trial a few new rules in the game. Here they are thanks to The Athletic.
1. Goalkeepers have only eight seconds to release the ball from their hands or be punished with a corner being awarded to the opposing team.
2. Referees will be wearing the equivalent of a dashcam. Attached to the earpiece and microphone already worn for communication purposes, there will be a tiny camera capturing a “ref’s-eye” view of the action at each Club World Cup game.
There will be limits to what is shown. Any incidents captured by the referee’s camera considered controversial, such as penalty decisions or red cards, will not be approved for broadcast.
Pierluigi Collina:
“This is a trial. “We need to do something new — and the simpler the better. So we fixed some rules within a protocol. Will we offer these images in the future? Maybe when we learn to run, maybe not, maybe we will do.”
3. Video assistant referee (VAR) footage shown to the referee during a game at the monitor will be broadcast simultaneously to the stadium crowd over the big screen, before a final decision is relayed over the public address system. And forget those fiddly bits of paper exchanged every time a team wants to make a substitution. FIFA has introduced substitute tablets given to each bench, with changes punched into that and shared with the fourth official and broadcast teams.
4. Offside technology has gone up a level as “real time” alerts will be sent to the match officials when it’s clear that a player is offside.
Collina:
“Since the very beginning (of the VAR system), on-pitch assistant referees have been told in case of doubt, keep the flag down,” he said. “It went a bit far. The doubt became bigger and bigger.
In my opinion, these changes, should they be implemented following their trial, which I’m sure they will, can only be good for the game. Definitely good for us as I don’t know about you but I get really frustrated when David Raya holds on to the ball for long periods of time and it’s so frustrating when opposition goalkeepers waste time in a game by doing the same.
VAR will no doubt take an age to come to any conclusion for the decisions they need to make but at least the game gets that time back at half/full time.
Might we expect a raised number of corners in a game? Perhaps, to begin with anyway but keepers will soon get used to the change. Just as they had to get used to not picking up a back pass a number of years ago.
Saying that, were any goalkeepers in the game now around when that rule came in? Lol
Catch up in the comments..