Now that we’re firmly entrenched in the 21st century, I suppose it’s not surprising that the empty suits running football have slowly started lurching towards perhaps discussing the possibility of adjusting some of the Laws of the Game.

We know how quickly and efficiently the guys (and it always is just guys, isn’t it?) at FIFA and the respective football associations work, after all. Since we have another few decades or so before anything gets accomplished, I thought I’d lay out a few suggestions that would help the sport adjust to modern reality.
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1. Respect for referees
At present, one of the worst nuisances plaguing the game is the shocking behaviour of players towards referees. Unfortunately, most of the outrage tends to be plaintive wailing about how it will affect the impressionable children watching. I couldn’t care less about them – that is what their parents are for. My concern about Rooneyesque behaviour is twofold – it slows down the game, and it potentially drives away prospective referees.

On Sunday afternoon, there was no five-minute stretch of the Blue Dark Side of the Force v. the Red Dark Side of the Force match where there wasn’t some grand display of arm-waving and yelling at the referee. Howard Webb did a magnificent job of calling the game (well, Didier Drogba should have walked for the elbow, but I think Webb might have been unsighted - and it was the only thing he missed), but he couldn’t have a quiet word with a player or issue a card without trying to stave off the hordes in blue and red who swarmed around him every time.

It may only be a few seconds at a time, but it eventually adds up to at least five minutes of a game spent watching players scream at the man in black. Considering how much it costs to attend a game, I want to see action tfor 90 minutes rather than a meeting of the debate team.

Even worse, the constant abuse from players (not to mention the fans and, worst of all, the mainstream media) must have a debilitating affect on the production of quality referees. While the mouth-breathers out there will judge a referee on the last time he controlled a game involving the team they support, the vast majority of officials range from mostly competent (Mike Dean) to the truly excellent (Steven Bennett). You wouldn’t know it, though, since they never get credit for their good performances while having every mistake exposed to the harsh glare of the media spotlight. But when they have to endure a constant barrage from the players as well, my feeling is that it reaches the point where most sensible people would just opt for something else.

If you are the type who complains about referees all the time, think for a second how many of them there are to choose from. Not many, and if you believe their blogs out there, then their numbers are reducing all the time. How can that possibly be good for the game?

With that in mind, I think the only option is to ban all players but the captain from having verbal contact with the referee. If the captain is the goalkeeper, then an “alternate captain” could be designated to do the talking to the match official. There is no reason why every decision should be accompanied by protests more organised than Vietnam War sit-ins. The captain should receive a brief explanation from the referee and then the game should progress. Period. Anyone else who says a peep to the ref gets booked, and sent off if it’s abusive. Yes, it seems harsh, but eventually there will be no one left who is masochistic enough to take the job if things continue along their current path.

2. Protect the goalkeepers
This is simple enough. Gentlemen like Jens Lehmann and the injured duo from the Blue Dark Side of the Force are correct in saying that goalkeepers do not receive enough protection. There are precious few instances where barrelling into the keeper at full speed is going to both produce a constructive result and be legal within the Laws of the Game. So what is the point in allowing it to continue?

Of course, I’m not saying that goalkeepers should be completely immune from contact, especially if they are the ones to dive at a shooter’s feet. However, I think a positive example can be taken from ice hockey where the goaltender is not allowed to be touched within his goal crease. In football, I think you could make a similar rule where there is no contact allowed with the keeper within the six-yard box. If you don’t want the keeper to get the ball, then don’t cross it right into his hands – simple as that.

3. The last-man rule is absolute rubbish
Well, perhaps I should clarify that. I do agree that a last-man defender who hauls down an attacking player should be punished, especially since no one wants an atmosphere where defenders can get off lightly for preventing a likely goal. However, my assertion is that a straight red card is far too harsh a punishment for the prevention of one scoring chance.

Take, for example, the Fulham-Reading match from last Saturday. Ian Pearce tackled Kevin Doyle from behind in the penalty area as the last man, and under the current rule referee Dermot Gallagher had no choice but to send him off. Reading converted the penalty, and their man advantage allowed them to win 1-0 in a match that Fulham dominated at times (even when they were down to 10 men). Of course, you can’t say that Fulham would definitely have won with their full assortment of players. However, if you played the match 100 times,  I believe they would have got a point in 80 of them, and won at least 50.

Everyone who defends this rule presents their case as if the shooter on the breakaway is always going to score. That is just not the case, especially when that person happens to be Emmanuel Adebayor (sigh). The keeper can save the shot, it could go wide or high, the defender could make an amazing last-ditch tackle or it could end up going off the woodwork. Sure, the most frequent occurrence will be a goal, but I imagine that about 20 percent of the time one of the above will happen. Coincidentally (or not), penalty kicks have about a 20 percent failure rate. So why not replicate the chances of scoring by awarding a penalty kick for a last-man infraction, no matter where it happens on the field? That, combined with a yellow card for the perpetrator, seems a far more reasonable punishment to me than ruining the spectacle of the game by showing someone a red card.

I feel red cards should only be shown for violent and abusive behaviour, or for two yellow-card offences. That’s it. Anything else is an insult and a slap in the face to the people who have spent their money expecting to be entertained. No one buys tickets to see the last 10 men in the Alamo hanging on by their fingernails.

4. An extra pair of eyes and a few well-placed cameras wouldn’t go awry
Football and ice hockey are remarkably similar sports, when you think about it, and thus I again borrow from the National Hockey League. For several years now, the NHL has employed two referees and two linesmen for every match, and they have brilliantly used video technology (on goal-line calls only) to ensure that human error is taken out of the sport as much as possible. I think it’s well past time for football to employ both as well.

With the speed of the game and the increasing pressure on referees to get every decision right, another set of eyes would help ensure that almost every offence is properly dealt with. You can’t say there isn’t room, either. Sure, there are 22 players on the football pitch as opposed to 12 in ice hockey (plus four officials), but hockey is an infinitely faster game that is played in a much smaller area. The extra official rarely interferes in the flow of play, so one more body on a football pitch should hardly cause the same. Having a referee in either half of the pitch would go a long way towards catching infractions behind the ball, as well as another visual angle for close calls where the first referee might be unsighted.

As for video technology, I absolutely believe that the fourth official should have access to all the camera angles the TV studios do (as Ian Holloway so astutely says in his latest BBC column). The popular argument against it is that it slows down the game and that human error is a part of sport. Both of those concepts are completely ludicrous. With rare exceptions, most video reviews in the NHL take a minute or two at longest – or just enough time for Arjen Robben to pull himself off the ground after his latest theatrical production. If you can abide watching players argue with the ref for 60 seconds, why can’t you abide a video review to ensure that the proper call is made?

The human-error argument, on the other hand, has some basis in reality. It has indeed been a part of the game for as long as people have kicked round objects. However, some major changes have occurred since then. For one thing, players now pass the ball along the ground sometimes, and both Hungary and Uruguay are no longer world football powers. Seriously, though, the money involved in the game means that an incorrect decision  could cost a club untold millions if it makes the difference between safety and relegation, or qualifying for Europe or not. Furthermore, human error was a part of the game because the technology needed to remove it had not yet been invented. The cameras and slow-motion replay and everything else is right there and ready to use…so why on earth not use it? It would be like a mining company leaving the power drills and heavy equipment in the warehouse while an army of workers goes at it with pick-axes and shovels. It’s an extreme example, but the same level of insanity is at play here.

The game has changed, and this section especially is the most important area in which the game's structure should change with it. I could live with ref abuse and the last-man rule if the referees were given the tools to ensure that mistakes were few and far between. With the financial consequences of incorrect decisions being what they are, the game owes it to its teams, players and fans to make as few mistakes as possible.

That said, pardon me if I’m not holding my breath for anything along these lines to actually happen. We wouldn’t want to be sensible and logical now, would we, FIFA?