AMERICAN, ARENA, ASSOCIATION, Australian Rules, Balkan, Beach Soccer, Canadian, Crab, Five-a-Side, Flag, Footbag, Freestyle, Futsal, Gaelic, Ice, Indoor Football, Jorkyball, Keepy-Uppie, Omegaball, Rollerball, Rugby League, Rugby Union, Sevens, Seven-a-Side, Street, Swamp, Three v Three, Three Sided, Touch, Walking and Wheelchair. That's 30 different types of football – and believe me, there are more, but some such as The Eton Wall Game are maybe just a tad too specialist.
I could even include such specialised forms of the game as Glasgow Works Football, games between blue collar workers often involving fixturs such as Tradesmen v Apprentices, Married Men v Single Men and the allegedly most-popular Billys v Tims, where there is but one rule: “Nae bluid, nae foul”.
The pureest and most-popular format, however, is what we in Scotland, the spiritual home of the game, we call “Fitba”. Two sides, each comprising 11 men, playing 45 minuts each way, the object of the game being to, uding any part of the body, except hands or arms, but mainly the feet, to propel the spheroid into one of the clearly identified goals at either end of a rectangular pitch; the team scoring the greater number of goals in the designated perid of to halves being the winner.
It could hardly be simpler, so, over the years the rules-makers have striven manfully to make such a simple game more-complicated. There latest such wheeze VAR may well be the best impediment yet to making the simplest of games more complex. It seems, since VAR was introduced, particularly into Scotland, that things have gone from bad to worse.
Take Sunday's big stooshie, at Pittodrie, where Kilmarnock Captain Brad Lyons, having initially been yellow-carded by Referee Matthew MacDermid, for a foul on Ester Sokler, saw his yellow upgraded to a red, after the intervention of VAR man Nick Walsh.
Post-match, Killie Boss Derek McInnes was not a happy chappie. He would happily have accepted a yellow card for his man, but he felt the red was excessive – and not just because I am a Kilmarnock fan, I agreed with Derek.
MacDermid is one of our younger officials, he may well be a coming man, but he is not, unlike Walsh, yet on the FIFA list – our top referees at present; so perhaps the upgrading was a case of the more-experienced official, if only even by the mystiucal power of status, persuading him to change his mind.
We ought perhaps to remember here what VAR stands for; it means Video ASSISTANT Referee, the man in the TV truck is there to Assist the referee, where perhaps he missed something. Consider too the Laws of the Game:
Law 5 clearly states: “The decisions of the referee regarding facts connected with play are final”.
So, when Mr MacDermid decided that Lyons' tackle on Sokler was worthy of a yellow card, that ought to have been the end of the matter. VAR is there to calrify situations where the referee has made a clear and obvious error – did this apply in this situation, I suggest not.
MacDermid spotted the foul
He penalised it
He considered the Lyons challenge worthy of a yellow card
He punished it with that sanction
Time to move on.
MacDermid had not made a clear and obvius error, he had administered a yellow card; that Walsh thought this insufficient punishment is neither here or there, he was butting into an incident which had nothig to do with him. I would suggest MacDermid's only error was to listen to the more-expereienced and more-senior official.
Let's hope, should the two find themselves in the same roles, in another game, MacDermid hasd the cojones to tell Walsh: “Butt out Nick, I saw it, I've dealt with it, thank you”.
VAR is a flawerd concept, being badly implemented. It has caused more problems than it has solved and needs urgent review. Is there the common sense and intelligence inside the game to bring about this necessary review? Ah ahe ma doots.
THAT WAS not the best stair-heid rammy of the weekend, however. Thr pictures are not great but, get onto The Guardian website, click on Sport, then go to US Sports and watch the stooshie during the Rutgers v Umass Women's Soccer (as our colonial cousins call it) match.
Basically, a foul, a tussle for the ball, punches thrown – two red cards. The very nice looking blonde who got the first red, long blonde hair, pony-tail, very American girl net door, is clearly not a lady to whom one might present a broken pay poke. Credit to the referee for handling the situation so well.
FINALLY – this morning the death was announced of Sven Goran Eriksson, the former England team manager, some eight months after he announced he had terminal cancer, he was 76.
As the first foreigner to manage the national side, Sven Goran was never going to get an easy ride from the Little Englanders in the tabloid press, but, even when his extra-curricular activities with fellow Swede Ulrika Johnssen became public, he behaved with a great deal more dignity than the red-top rottweillers who pursued him.
I suppose, like every other England manager, Sven Goran suffered from being unable to fulfill English expectations. He supposedly had at his disposal, a Golden Generation of talent – the reality being, as is so oftent he case, being English the players were over-rated by their press corps, keen to build theem up, so they could have fun knocking them down.
He had a distinguished record across Europe and while perhaps not on the upper level of the managerial pantheon, he was a very-good coach, My condolences to hius family and friends.
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