Increasing The Standard: Issues With Football Today

In this article I am going to outline the main problems and issues facing the sport today and in my follow up article I'm going to see what could resolve these problems.

Football (to me) is a great game to watch. In fact it's a great game full stop. The fast paced action, the passion and the fans make it a unique game. However football does have issues that it has to confront and deal with if it is to move forward.

No. 1: Increase Competition

In Premier League, it's almost a given that one of three or four teams will be crowned champions. Often the season plays out as a two horse race. In La Liga, every season boils down to two teams—Barcelona and Real Madrid. Inter Milan has won the Series A title four times in a row.

There's no doubt that at the top level, football is becoming predictable. By halfway through the season you basically know what two teams will be competing for the title. By three quarters of the season you basically know the winner.

Even considering the many exceptions to the rule still football has become rather stale. On consider this—it is only going to get worse. As more money floods the sport only a select few teams will benefit from this in a substantial way.

This will mean that the sport can only get more predictable. Not good.

No. 2: Referees

I have a deep respect for referees. They make extremely difficult judgements where, whatever the outcome a lot of people are going to hate you for that judgement. But there is one undeniable fact. Referees are human and often human error affects their decision.

You only have to remember the infamous goal that never was in the Reading vs Watford to know that sometimes even the experts can get it very very wrong indeed. Often some decisive games have been decided not on which team was the best but on a central decision that could have gone either way. Now I'm not saying that all these decisions went the wrong way but I've lost count of the times I have sat through match of the day and A referee's decision has been shown to be a poor one.

Obviously not a lot of blame can be placed upon referees. Honest mistakes happen in every single profession. Nobody can claim not to be unconsciously influenced by a crowd of (at least) 18,000 screaming at you if you do something that displeases them. However a football game should have a winner who deserves to win, not from a refereeing mistake that went in their favour.

No. 3: Sportsmanship

Something that really needs to be addressed in the game is the way players conduct themselves in the game. This has been recognised by the Premier League with the promotion last season of fair play. However the 2008-2009 season saw no improvement in the standard of respect in the game.

Incidences such as Joe Kinnear's swearing rant, Danny Guthrie taking out his frustration on Craig Fagan and Didier Drogba's rant at the referee after the Chelsea vs Barcelona semifinal all show that the latest sportsmanship drive had little affect.

This really does negatively impact the sport. Bad sportsmanship is what nobody wants to see and lowers the standing of the sport in non-fans eyes. It really doesn't  promote the sport when what makes the headlines is the latest horror tackle and not the latest wonder goal.

Thanks for reading. I will write a follow up article setting out my solutions to these problems.