Football's laws must be changed after the midweek events in the Champions League defeats for Arsenal and Manchester City says the Millwall manager
Some Arsenal fans paid over a hundred quid to watch the Gunners play Bayern Munich in the Champions League.
Thanks to a law that’s bringing football into disrepute, they got just 36 minutes of genuine 11 versus 11 entertainment.
Because the moment that Arsenal keeper Wojciech Szczesny was sent off for bringing down Arjen Robben and conceding a penalty, it was game over.
David Alaba may have sent his spot kick against the post but the European champions were never going to let Arsene Wenger’s side off the hook.
Sure enough, it finished 2-0 – and the thousands of Arsenal fans who paid their money at the Emirates were left feeling cheated.
There had been a similar tale of woe 24 hours earlier, when Manchester City’s Martin Demichelis saw red for bringing down Barcelona’s Lionel Messi.
With one Argentine heading for the dressing room, another scored from the penalty spot.
And, with most of the second half still to play, City’s fans were left hoping their team could just keep the score down.
The fact that these two games were in the Champions League – THE premier tournament in football – meant there was an even greater sense of the spectacle being destroyed.
Let’s not forget, this is the entertainment business – and, whether people are watching in the stands or on their televisions at home, we must strive to give them value for money.
To do that, we HAVE to change the laws of the game.
Not to encourage foul play or cheating, but to make sure that the punishments meted out by referees do not ruin games of football.
I believe rugby union offers the solution.
If a rugby player is adjudged to have deliberately prevented a try-scoring opportunity, the referee can still award the touchdown. It is the ultimate sanction in stamping out cheating – and I can’t understand why we don’t use the same kind of logic in football.
At the moment, our referees are obliged to issue a red card if they believe a player has used foul play to deny the opposing team a clear goal-scoring opportunity.
If the misdemeanour takes place inside the box, then the offending team is hit with the triple whammy of conceding a penalty, being reduced to 10 men and having the dismissed player banned for subsequent matches.
It’s a punishment that doesn’t fit the crime.
I don’t want to see football besmirched by foul play, but sending off players for so-called “professional” offences isn’t working.
Fans want to see justice administered, but what they don’t want to see is teams reduced to 10 men when they’ve shelled out a big chunk of their hard-earned cash on tickets.
We all remember Luis Suarez’s deliberate handball in the last minute of Uruguay’s World Cup quarter-final against Ghana in 2010, when he punched Dominic Adiyiah’s effort off the line.
Suarez was sent off, but Asamoah Gyan missed the subsequent spot-kick and Ghana lost in a penalty shoot-out. Are you telling me that was fair?
I’m sure mistakes will be made – but, if a referee blows for a foul, he should be able to use these natural breaks in play to ask his fourth official to use video evidence to decide whether the offence also constituted the denial of a clear goal-scoring chance.
The alternative is to keep ripping off supporters.
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