Is it even possible to remove subjectivity from the officiating? Words like ‘negligible’, ‘deliberate’ and ‘dangerous’ currently do a lot of the heavy lifting in the laws of the game, all of which are quantifiable and open to interpretation.
How could realistic technology, either now or in the future, help the officials with the black/white yes/no in/out decisions?
Constructive discussion only please.
VAR - move to rugbys system. One of the biggest issues right now is on field refs are still expected to make every decision as they see it live, with VAR only intervening for clear and obvious errors. So for example if a goal is given on field, even if that was an error, unless VAR sees something egregious it doesn’t get overturned cos they don’t want to make the ref look bad. Use rugbys system where if the ref isn’t sure, the game gets pauses and he asks a very clear question. “looks to me like serious foul play from 23, do you see any reason why I can’t award the red card?”
Diving - ref doesn’t award dives unless its clear. Every single foul awarded in the game gets checked after the game by an independent panel and if no contact is made the player gets a 1 match ban. Watch how quickly people stop doing it.
Tactical fouls - the rodri special when an opposition player is through clear in transition and gets pulled down, red card. That is the number one best chance to score in football and 90% of them get stopped because players know they only get booked.
Handballs in penalty area - none of this natural position bollocks, if the player makes a clear attempt to move their hand toward a ball to block it, penalty. If not, no penalty. Fouls are awarded for cheating not because a shot going 80mph glanced your finger when your hands are by your side.
Fouls in penalty area - if there is contact with the ball before the player, no penalty. Objective. Does the ball move before the player makes contact with the player? No penalty.
Offside - daylight between players is offside, everything else isn’t. None of this subjective rubbish selecting which part of the body the line is used with.
Thanks for the answer. Just to show how hard it is to make laws non-subjective I will bold the subjective/grey areas and put in italics the instances that could lead to unjust decisions in your suggestions
On diving - not every time someone goes down with no contact is necessarily a dive and not every dive has no contact.
Tactical fouls - think you’d have to be a bit more specific about what constitutes ‘through clear’ but I agree with the sentiment
Handballs - the use of ‘clear’ leaves it almost as open to interpretation as it is now
Fouls - football is a contact sport, you should be able to shield or go shoulder to shoulder without giving a penalty away
Offside - don’t mind this but at the end of the day I think it’s the tech that needs to improve rather than the laws