Modern football things you don't like

[katweslowski]

I watch a fair amount of Premier League football which is where most of this post stems from. I'm thinking about the smaller things, like things which irk you.

For me:

Ripping socks - I'd never seen this before up until maybe 1-2 years ago. Now loads of players do it. I am sure that over the past 100 years, players didn't need to do it, so why now?

Players falling down, legitimately or not, and grabbing the ball with their hands to force the ref to stop

The use of fancy lighting shows at bog standard games, where all the flood lights dance around flashing

The hughmongous advertising boards that Man City have - which appear double in height. They're doing the job fantastically as they continually distract me from the game. Annoying but great for the marketing folk.

Peter Drury and his oxf*rd poetic ramblings, plus non-stop screaming of players names

Playing from the back. It's great sometimes but EVERY team do it now, in all leagues as far as I am aware. It's often really boring as you can get teams (usually the better ones) passing it around the back for about 2 minutes before doing anything with it.

[genome]

Inconsistent punishment for dissent - sometimes players get booked for gobbing off (rightfully), sometimes they will ber8 the ref right in his face and the ref does nothing

[AthleticoSpizz]

Excessive a***licking media coverage of ‘certain teams’

[Winston Biscuit]

Pretendy head injuries so that play has to stop

[Dirk Gently]

Badge-kissing, when everyone knows that the player doing the kissing had likely never heard of that team before joining them, and would drop them the second a bigger club waved the chequebook in their direction

[Sanguine]

Don't know if I'm imagining another thread on this, that has disappeared?

On there I mentioned one of my biggest gripes - how poorly the 'six second rule' is refereed for goalkeepers who hold on to the ball, delaying the start of play. The law is correctly subjective - the referee should not start those six seconds whilst the keeper is on the floor or surrounded by players, but nevertheless keepers seem to routinely hold the ball for well in excess of this.

[Winston Biscuit]

I think my most hated things in football are:

1. VAR
2. Not celebrating scoring a goal because you previously played for the club

[genome]

Don't know if I'm imagining another thread on this, that has disappeared?

It was this, but opposite - https://hobnob.royals.org/forum/viewtop ... 3&t=190396

[Ascotexgunner]

Substitutes who are completely unprepared to come on at short notice. The injured player stays down until the sub has taken his bottoms off, puts his socks on, ties his socks, puts his boots on, takes his tracksuit top off which isn't zip up and then puts his shirt on....the whole process takes so long.

[Sutekh]

1. Money and all the related corruption it brings
2. FIFA/UEFA bloating their tournament finals and messing up qualification processes to ensure all the big nations can’t possibly miss a finals unless they’re utterly inept
3. VAR and the standard of refs in the U.K.
4. Too much TV coverage resulting 24 hour cr@pola and making out a chase for 4th place is an actual thing
5. The utterly tedious keepball that everyone plays, at all levels, with the endless boring crabbing about and the utterly insane passing the ball all the way back to your own keeper from set pieces at the other end of the field
6. All the uninteresting “stats” that have suddenly started appearing
7. The fact that, apparently, football only started in 1992
8. The fact that the big clubs seem to run everything and governing bodies are so wet and spineless
9. Dai Yongge
10. Actually not that keen on a football regulator either. It’s bound to become a political appointment and we’ll probably end up with a quango and government interference

[Winston Biscuit]

Massively with you on stats. I like a nice little stat that reveals something you wouldn't otherwise of known, or one that goes against the narrative and gives you something to think about, so has value. But if now feels like there is almost an entire industry built around thinking up more and more preposterous stats.

Assists were the biggest nonsense stat as people took it seriously, but now we have 'goal involvement' which is just trying to pretend that an assist has equal value to a goal

There are also so many nonsense stats these days that clearly cannot be defined and are just based on someone's opinion.

[Sanguine]

I mean, generally speaking, you don't score a goal without an assist.

Data is in fact critical to modern day football and, fitness aside (which is itself supported by analytics), represents the biggest change in the sport since the 'old days' of the 20th Century.

I shared this anecdote before, a small part of what has made Rodri the player that he is - brother in law close to Etihad and had a chat with City's Sporting Director. A couple of years ago analysts found that it took Rodri around half a second longer to move the ball right to left across the pitch as it did left to right - combination of lesser first touch with his weaker foot, and less efficient weight transfer. He got an injury, and during his lay-off of a few months, the club put together a specific training plan to address this, technique, certain exercises etc, and improved that timing gap. There's little doubt that Rodri has been the best midfielder in the world in the last two years.

You might/probably think this is data-driven bullshit, but it speaks of the margins at which elite players operate, the tiny gains that can make a difference at the top level.

The amount of stat presented to fans is just an off-shoot of the availability of more analytics. Maybe it could be better targeted, but it does mean something. No stats are truly subjective.

[Winston Biscuit]

I don't think anyone at all has any issue with scientific data being used within football to spot areas to analyse and work on. The issue is when the media either get hold of those, or use stats companies outside of clubs, and push them out to the football watching public, with no context, proving them valueless. They are just used for ammo by kids on social media to battle over who is the best because player A does more 'dynamic sprints in the final 3rd', yet player B does more 'valuable passes under pressure per minute'

[6ft Kerplunk]

Players holding their hand in front of their mouth, particularly at freekicks, so we can't lip read "kick the ball into the goal".

[Sanguine]

Players holding their hand in front of their mouth, particularly at freekicks, so we can't lip read "kick the ball into the goal".

Indeed. Or when they shake hands after the match, so we don't realise they are all going to the same club in a few hours, having spent 90 minutes insulting each other's parentage.

[Winston Biscuit]

Players holding their hand in front of their mouth, particularly at freekicks, so we can't lip read "kick the ball into the goal".

absolutely. iirc it started in Spanish football because they got a lip reader on telly to understand what players were saying to each other. so some players protested by covering their mouths, and some here must have seen it and just thought its what people do now so they had better join in

[Sutekh]

Players lying down behind a wall at a free kick
IFAB’s ******* stupid & unnecessary fiddling about with the laws of the game that mean defenders now hold their hand behind their backs when defending in the penalty area

[katweslowski]

Stats agree with completely. Often I have to really think hard to even understand and comprehend what it means. "Man City have won all games, when they had the first corner and scored first in all Saturday games".

The stupid handshake celebrations that players do after games or just in general. Like they'll tap each others hand three times, then some other movement that they've previous rehearsed and practised.

[katweslowski]

standard of refs in the U.K.

I struggle to agree with this based on the following:

- The ref is a single person, in the middle of a pitch. Surrounded by 22 top athletes and players, all berating him
- There are 10,000 up to 75,000 (PL) in the ground all berating the ref
- There are two managers, plus about 10 others at the sidelines shouting at the ref and berating him
- After the game, the media spend 3-4 days playing the single split second decision over and over, often with pundits all torn on the right answer.

- All the players, spend the game often:

Cheating
Trying to deceive the ref
Elaborating just how bad a tackle was
Feigning injury
Lying about something, such as when a ball CLEARLY touches them and they go nuts as if it's their ball
Abusing the ref

...

Not for a second saying the refs are good (or bad), just saying that I think they should be given a bit of a free pass, until the players all stop cheating every single fecking minute of the game.

[BRO_BOT]

standard of refs in the U.K.

I struggle to agree with this based on the following:

- The ref is a single person, in the middle of a pitch. Surrounded by 22 top athletes and players, all berating him
- There are 10,000 up to 75,000 (PL) in the ground all berating the ref
- There are two managers, plus about 10 others at the sidelines shouting at the ref and berating him
- After the game, the media spend 3-4 days playing the single split second decision over and over, often with pundits all torn on the right answer.

- All the players, spend the game often:

Cheating
Trying to deceive the ref
Elaborating just how bad a tackle was
Feigning injury
Lying about something, such as when a ball CLEARLY touches them and they go nuts as if it's their ball
Abusing the ref

...

Not for a second saying the refs are good (or bad), just saying that I think they should be given a bit of a free pass, until the players all stop cheating every single fecking minute of the game.

That's the working class for you. Lying and cheating is just in their nature