I have ideas I tell you! Ideas!

I've decided to take stab on ways to improve the domestic game while I have plenty of time to think about it. The MLS off season and waiting for our new US head coach (to be announced I guess a month before WC qualifying begins at this rate) has left me with plenty of opportunity to toss around ideas in my head.

So here we go:

IDEA #1

As it is, if a player goes down and the trainers have to come on, the trainers will tend to the player on the field before eventually getting him off to the side where, more often than not, he pops up and is ready to come back on in the blink of an eye. An easy few minutes or more is wasted while all of this unfolds.

I say that if a player goes down and the trainers have to come on the field, they stretcher him off to the side and off the field of play before they can tend to him. This way play can be quickly restarted, the flow of the game interrupted less, and players inclined to diving/faking in order to waste time are now punishing their teams by putting them a man down instead of giving their team a chance to rest and regroup while they flail about.


IDEA #2

This next idea may at first seem complicated, but it's really, really not. It's genesis comes from basketball where they punish teams if they keep hacking away and fouling their opposition.

Too often, I feel, certain MLS matches spiral out of control into hack fests. This is because a defender is either tired, not that good, or a combo of both and is continually hacking down an attacking player instead of getting beat. How often have we seen attacking plays and counter attacks die because the DM takes the attacking player down, allowing the rest of his team to track back? All the fouling brings down the beautiful into something ugly.

You don't foul someone because you're the better player. You do it because you got beat or couldn't stop them legally. If the whole team is accumulating like 20+ fouls a games it's because since they're not good enough to beat you head on, they just hack you, disrupt your rhythm, and hope to get lucky with a counter.

I say that we start punishing teams in game based of team foul accumulations. This is how it's done.

A stat keeper will keep track of all the fouling done during a game. When a team reaches 10 total team fouls the person on that team with the most individual fouls will receive a yellow card. If that person already has a yellow card, then the person with the most individual fouls without a yellow gets it as a team foul yellow can not be used as a second yellow against someone. A yellow is dished out at every additional 10 team fouls, with the yellow going to the player with the highest number of fouls who doesn't already hold a yellow card.

This punishes the fouling team because a yellow card on a player changes tactics and dynamics. That player must play more careful and less reckless now, a coach may have to sub that player out earlier than they wanted to or take them out at all because it's too dangerous to keep them in. The less aggressive play allows for more attacking play to open up.

An important thing to note is that any team foul yellows a person gets is not eligible for fines and does not count against them with discipline points. If a player gets sent off from a game because a double yellow/red card and that first yellow as a team foul yellow, they do not have to sit out the next game or get fined and assessed discipline points except for only the yellow card they earned on their own.

This way it only punishes the team for that one game, and not the player(s) for future games. It also helps avoid get crap from the players union because you're not taking money from their members and making them potetnial sit out future games.




I have another idea but I'll wait to share that with my next posting.