Comparison of fouls across the years

9 Replies to “Comparison of fouls across the years”

1. Tony and Walter…..as a referee who has officiated across both the 20th and 21st century, I definitely see a change in the game that has rendering catching fouls and cheating even harder than it once was:

   1)Players never really respected the officials much in either era BUT today they are downright abusive and aggressive in far too many instances. This leads to an official getting annoyed (right Walter?) at this attitude and being more inclined to control the game using his cards, imho.

   2)When I first started officiating in the 70’s, players generally didn’t have the finesse and interest in dibing and simulating. This has definitely changed and made it harder to spot the fakers, because they’ve perfected this ¨art¨! We used to say that Italy had 20,000 actors and all the bad ones were on the stage. Now there are hundred of thousands worldwide and most are playing on TV!

   3) Rotational fouling is now coming into vogue, as is shirt pulling, elbowing and studs up tackling on the opponents ankle, to name a few favourites. Officiating has not really improved substantially since I began in the 70’s but the players speed, strength, overall size, skill level and aggressiveness has….it is getting harder and harder to keep^up with it all. FIFA can make the rules but officials need to apply them uniformly and they don’t get a great deal of help or support for that.

   As usual, officials are regarded as an uncomfortable necessity but not worthy of any real concern, as long as the 22+ players get their game. God help us IF we have a bad game or make some serious mistakes….they will line up to chastize us but rarely remember us when all goes well. Maybe the latter is the way it should be but NOT the former!

2. Opps…too many typos! dibing=diving, keep up

3. The officiating has not changed in large part because the corrupt nature of FIFA did not want it to change. The officiating is the easiest way for game manipulation so that results favor what FIFA/Uefa/FAs and various corrupt individuals want.

   They need to:
   1) Value getting the decision right and make every effort to help the refs on the field get the decision right.
   2) they need to add an official on the field – 2 field refs and 2 line refs working the game together.
   3) they need to give line refs whistles and authority to call fouls
   4) they need to have more refs and pay the better
   5) they need to have video reply at all high level games with a focus on penalty decisions
   6) the officiating team ought to be able to do all aspects of the game and the duties are assigned randomly just before the game.
   7) no ref should do more than two league games and one cup game with any one team

   this is just a start of suggestions

4. Slightly OT
   Mark Clattenburg has been assigned to referee the France/Portugal Euros final on Sunday.

5. I remember reading an interview with Riley a few years ago in which he said that the main target for referees was to keep the game flowing. And in order to do that… the refs ignore fouls they didn’t ignore in the past.
   This is the main reason for there being fewer fouls in the PL. Mind you from the back of my head I seem to remember that in other leagues the number of given fouls is a lot higher. Don’t have time to go on the lookout for the moment.

   The fact that the cards numbers are roughly the same is because for some type of fouls there is now a mandatory card. If the ref doesn’t give it he will drop points from his report. So he will give more yellow cards for fewer fouls.

   So in short: it is down to Riley and the PGMO. Has it ever been different over the last 6-7 years? 😉

6. It is noteworthy that in 2000/2001 Newcastle had an extremely high fouls per card ratio.

   I did some cursory research at that time and from memory there was a very clear reason for that statistic. A certain “football expert” by the name of Alan Shearer managed to commit the most fouls of any premiership player for two (possibly three) consecutive seasons.

   OK Shearer was an old fashioned, rough, tough centre-forward. But the referee/FA bias that existed at that time actually saw Shearer actually go without a single yellow card for about two consecutive seasons too – that was something like 200 fouls without a card (and some of those fouls involved elbows let’s not forget!).

   If I recall correctly during the same era, Patrick Vieira was picking up a yellow for about every three or four fouls!! You draw your own conclusions…..I’m sure they’ll be the same as mine.

7. One place where video and computer technology might help, is diving. In a dive, the athlete prepares for contact with the Earth before they notice they have been tripped (or whatever). A computer needs to analyze the athlete’s position frame by frame (preferably much higher than 24 fps frame rate) to look for this.

8. It’s become more obvious to me in the last couple of seasons that tackling with the wrong foot (the leg closest to the tackled player) is being punished almost automatically as it is viewed as being almost impossible to do ‘cleanly’. They are often not dirty fouls but, as contact is made with the opponent before the ball, they must be ‘foul’ tackles.

9. Two points:

   1. Think the standard of refereeing in the Euros has been vastly better than we see in the PL. Hardly a single game has been ruined/distorted by poor decisions. I think only 2 red cards as well, so the refs have been using their other skills to control games. Very refreshing.

   2. Still can’t quite believe Tottenham avoided any red cards on the field (two retrospectively) last season.