Football

There are two parts to experimentation within football; being willing to try new things and to admit when you were wrong.  In Monday’s English Premier League match between Wolves and Liverpool there was a single moment where both elements of experimentation were on display.

Patricio was involved in a collision with his own defender after the assistant kept his flag down to let play continue after a close offside. Although he has since been cleared of any serious injury he was knocked unconscious and received oxygen on the field.

The Premier League has implemented a ‘concussion substitute’ which enables the club to sub on a player to replace a player with a head injury even if they have used all their substitutes.  This is a great example of something that all parties can agree on and represents a change with seemingly little downside, so why not!? 

Unfortunately, in modern-day football culture you are usually given a truly short leash in all the administrative positions.  This disincentivizes those in with the power to change from trying new things because of the fear of making a ‘mistake’ that ends their career. 

There are times where a law has no downside to implementing but then there are unforeseeable consequences to those law changes; in that same play with Rui Patricio, we saw an example of a law that was thought to be a clear improvement but now that we see it play out, there is a major issue.

Assistant referees keep their flag down unless there is an obvious offside, this way play can go on and if a goal is scored from an offside position VAR can always review and correct the mistake.  I must applaud the leagues who tried this idea out, it made sense on paper and there was no real way to foresee the issue.  On the surface this makes absolute sense, you do not want to stop a potential goal if you can not be sure it was offside, but what if that results in unnecessary collisions that cause serious injury?  Is it still worth a few more goals being scored that may have been wrongly chalked off?

If the referee put up his flag for offside likely the collision between Patricio and his defender would not have occurred.  So maybe its time to look at keeping the flag down and perhaps VAR as it pertains to offside as a whole.  Jota sums it up in his post game interview perfectly: “Life is more important [than football].”.

Media, fans, and all the people in football need to remind themselves that without giving room for administrators to experiment there will never be progress. 

You can not be afraid to Change the Game.