Getting the Time Right

Continuing my recent spate of (popular) football related posts in honour of the ongoing World Cup, I've decided to have a dig at that aspect of The Beautiful Game which probably causes more angst and dismay than any other:
Time Wasting.

Now I was going to spend a little bit of time going into all those intensely annoying techniques whereby professional footballers frustratingly whittle away the seconds (and so deny the paying public of what it is they've actually come to watch i.e. football!), but instead I'm going to point you towards a blog which has already done that in a very comprehensive way indeed:

15 time wasting tactics in football

This gives me the opportunity to offer up my grand master-plan for eliminating this annoying aspect once and for all.
Stop The Clock!
Sounds simple, doesn't it, and in a way, it is.
All you need is a guy with a stopwatch (or, for the more sophisticated level of the game, a guy in the stand with a finger linked to a big clock!) who's been given a set of simple rules:

• when the ball goes out of play (for a throw-in or goal-kick), stop the clock.
• when the ball goes back in play, start the clock.
• when the referee blows his whistle for a foul, stop the clock.
• when the free kick/penalty is taken, start the clock.
• when the substitution is being made, the clock is stopped.

Each half of football will be reduced to thirty minutes (giving us an hour of actual play), which equates nicely with the rough average of 56 minutes of actual football in a current 90 minute match.

It also means that, at the end of each half, there will be a clear and unequivocal understanding of how long is left to play (so no more Fergie-time!)

It will also do away with players feigning injuries, kicking the ball away, last minute substitutions to run down the clock…in fact, many of the things which really piss the viewing public off.

Are you listening, Sepp?

Are you?

Introducing the FIFA All Stars

Well, much to my surprise, my last few posts ('The Ugly Truth about The Beautiful Game' and 'The Meaning of LiFIFA 1, 2 & 3)' have turned out to be my most successful posts in terms of the number of page visits and the number of comments. (Thanks to everyone who's shown an interest and commented - you're all fabulous!)
So, in a cheap and tawdry effort to continue this increased traffic on my blog, I've decided to go for another football related post, one which I am sure will appeal not only to the money-grabbers at FIFA but also, perhaps, to a couple of billion football fans whose teams didn't make it to the spectacle in Brazil.

The FIFA All Stars.
It's a simple enough idea.
23 players chosen from all those countries that didn't qualify (no more than 2 players per country though) and managed by a special 'guest' manager (I'm thinking Fergie or The Special One).
Just think about it - that's potentially 23 more countries (and their fanbase) with a vested interest in the World Cup, which, in turn, means 23 more countries for TV rights, advertising, replica shirt sales, etc, etc. You'd have a player from China there, that's for sure!

But looking beyond the money and thinking just about the football (which I guess counts the guys from FIFA out), just consider if they'd had the FIFA All Stars in the past, then we'd have been able to see the likes of George Best, George Weah and Ryan Giggs strutting their stuff on the biggest footballing stage in the world - how genuinely cool would that have been.

So who thinks this is a fantastic idea?
Do you think Sepp and his buddies will cut me in for 10%?
And if you do, who should be in the FIFA All Stars squad for this World Cup?