da dobrowin： It’s been coming for a while now, and before long it will come fully to fruition. Football will become a non-contact sport.
da marjack bet： A bit of an exaggeration of course, but that’s how it feels sometimes. Tackling seems to be a dying art. Hard but fair has been lost from the game. Any contact sees the opposition player writhing around on the floor. The slightest showing of a stud, the smallest lifting of the foot off the ground, and a red card is always a possibility. Defenders stand off and cover areas rather than trying to win back possession. Evan FIFA 12 has pretty much cut out tackling, in a bid to ramp up the realism. Better for players to block than tackle nowadays, but make sure you have your hands behind your back, because god forbid it should hit your arm or hand as the crowd will rise as one and demand a penalty.
Of course no one wants to see players pick up serious injuries. There had to be changes in the sport compared to the “old days”, when a karate-kick to an opponenet’s midriff would mean a stern talking to from the referee, and a red card was really earned, But this is a high-speed, competitive, aggressive sport. There will always be injuries, and a player is just as likely to pick up an injury without contact from anyone as he is from a hard tackle. Violence should be punished severely, endangering opponenets too, but nowadays a mistimed tackle si enough for a caution. Red cards are so easy to pick up nowadays, it is little surprise that defenders seem loathe to tackle. This may have explained the early season run of crazy score lines, from Manchester City’s 5-1 win at White Hart Lane and 6-1 romp at Old Trafford, to United’s 8-2 destruction of Arsenal. Though equally likely was that these were just a run of freak results.
But get away with a bad tackle, and there will be trial by television of course. Not necessarily a bad thing of course, but just another reason that many footballers are scared of touching another footballer (except it seems to repeatedly grab their shirts at set pieces).
After Manchester United’s comprehensive defeat to Barcelona in last season’s Champions League final, Bobby Charlton observed that two decades of rule changes by FIFA had made the sport almost non-contact, and that the traditional style of the English game meant we have suffered more than most as a result. Alex McLeish has made similar comments, though he was defending an Alan Hutton horror tackle at the time, so we should probably move on.
Lee Dixon claims he would be sent off every week under current rules.
“I think the art of defending is something that is being slowly eroded. It’s almost become a non-contact sport in as much as you’re not allowed to tackle from the side or from behind,” said Dixon. “Players have contributed to the downfall of the tackle with all the play-acting and diving. Football is now less of a defensive spectacle and that’s not good for the game. I wouldn’t like to be playing now.” Fair points, though surely eradicating tackling from behind is reasonable enough?
Not surprisingly, the average number of goals per game is on course to be the highest this season since the Premiership began, with an average of 2.85 goals per game (as of a couple of weeks ago), 0.4 goals higher than 5 years ago. Quite simply, it’s never been harder to be a defender. The quality has not worsened- the Premiership is full of excellent defenders, with a handful of world class ones. But confusing offside laws and hysteria over crunching tackles means defending the goal is not getting easier, and the goals are increasing. Good news for those that judge entertainment by the number of goals, but for the purists it is a sad time as one of the sport’s greatest arts slowly ebb away.
If you have a spare 5 mins then why not watch the latest ‘Football Coffee Break’
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