Ten Most Annoying Things in Modern Football

1.     Diving

Is there anything in all of humanity that incurs more hatred than seeing some namby-pamby, precious princess from the opposition do a full-on piked somersault with 2 and a half twists whenever a defender enters the same postcode as him?

2.     That Argentinian bloke’s hair

Please, someone just cut it off in his sleep...

3.    The price of a half-time pie-and-pint

£6.50 for a swede and potato pasty? Even Torres offers better value, for God’s sake!

3.    Full-kit fans

It should be illegal for anybody over the age of 8 to wear their team’s full strip to a game (or anywhere else, for that matter). Wearing a captain’s armband and putting “Big Dave” on the back of your shirt will only serve to make people lose any respect that they might have had for you.

4.    That cheesy song that comes on at every ground after a goal

'Duh-da-duh, ba-duh-ba-da-duh...'

5.    Half-and-half scarves

No. Just no. You support one team.

This look OK to you?

6.    Spitting

Disgusting and offensive - there's just no need. 

7.    Players’ excuses

“I couldn’t save that 35-yard shot, it ‘moved’.” As opposed to the good old days when you booted a ball and it would just get stuck in the mud.

8.    Players who don’t who don’t know the words to their national anthem

We’re looking at you, Wayne. 

"Errr.... what's the next bit?"

9.    That bloke in the pub who thinks he’s the Dalai Lama when it comes to footballing wisdom

"We should be playing a 5-3-4!"

10.   Foul throws

£80k a week and you can’t chuck a ball over your head? You don't deserve to live!

Football in a nutshell: Moody-Mackay ‘text-gate’ sums up everything that’s wrong with our game

The word ‘banter’ gets flipped around a lot these days. There are scenarios in which it is appropriate: it would be an apt way to describe hilarious drunken mishaps on a night out, for instance, or mickey-taking in the dressing room, but for the League Managers Association (LMA) to use it so flippantly to describe the disgusting conversations that were recently discovered between Malky Mackay and Iain Moody is unforgivable, and it says a lot about the culture surrounding the game we all know and love.

I would say that 95% of English football fans would condemn what was said in those messages as totally unacceptable in today’s society. After all, if you had uttered such abhorrent phrases in any street in Britain, I’d like to think that you would be arrested before you could say ‘friendly banter’. So why is it, then, that football continues to allow such attitudes and dismiss them so lightly? 

The fact is that, whatever you may hear, football is several decades behind the times when it comes to issues such as racism, anti-semitism, sexism and homophobia. The ‘Kick It Out’ campaign is welcomed and will continue to build bridges but as it stands, there is more discrimination in football than in virtually any other walk of life. You won’t hear about it unless it involves a high-profile figure (a la Suarez, Terry, and now Mackay), because the big-wigs at the top of the English game sweep it all under the carpet, but you can be sure that it is there at every Football League ground in the country, be it in the form of homophobic chants, bananas thrown (which happens more than you hear about) or anti-Semitic violence before and after games. But more worryingly, discrimination is prevalent among the authorities. Greg Dyke himself said recently that the FA is overwhelmingly white and male, and in today's 21st century 'multicultural' society, there is not a single black manager in English football. Coincidence? I think not.

Admittedly, English football is not as bad as some other countries such as Italy and Russia in terms of levels of institutionalised discrimination, where racism is almost accepted at football stadia. It must also be said that it is only a small minority who are poisoning English football with prehistoric attitudes. However, this minority is tarnishing football’s reputation, or as the FA always like to put it, ‘bringing the game into disrepute’, and they must be punished accordingly. 

I for one will be very disappointed if the Football Association doesn’t come down on Mackay, Moody and more importantly the LMA like a ton of bricks and issue the heaviest punishment they have the power to sanction. A statement of intent must be made; it must be made clear to these dinosaurs that discrimination will not be tolerated in football. Moreover, they must prove that such issues are not swept under the carpet, that English football does welcome all cultures, that they are serious about improving the culture surrounding football, and that they will not overlook any breach of conduct, regardless of who the culprit is. If Mackay, Moody and Richard Bevan (head of the LMA) are not banned from the game for a very long time, then serious questions will have to be asked about the integrity at the top of English football.

Flippers off, boots on: a 4-step guide to eradicating diving from football

Diving, or ‘flopping’ as our trans-Atlantic counterparts call it, is one of the biggest issues surrounding the modern game, yet no real action has been taken by authorities to stamp out  the epidemic. 

Some of the games at the World Cup became a farce due to particular players being more interested in winning fouls than scoring a goal (I’m looking at you, Arjen), and the culture of ‘going down easy’ has spread to the Premier League in recent years as well. No one likes to see it. It is cheating, and it makes the referee’s job all the more impossible. It also damages football’s reputation and gives rugby-lovers all the ammunition they need to badmouth our beautiful game. 

However, I believe that if the following sanctions were in brought in by Football HQ, in a matter of weeks we would see strikers trying to score goals again rather than fall over.

1.   Retrospective punsihments

This is a concept that has been banded around for a while now - it is time that the FA enforced it. A panel who sit down on a Monday morning and view controversial events involving possible simulation and hand out 3-match bans or hefty fines where necessary would act as a huge deterrent to wannabe Tom Daleys.

2.   Instruct referees to give more fouls when players stay on their feet

This is a simple and very obvious idea, but I believe it would make a huge difference. If referees made it very clear to players that they will give fouls regardless of whether they hit the deck or not, players would be much more inclined to stay on their feet, especially if there was a better advantage system…

3.   Make the advantage rule more like rugby

This follows on from 3). Allow me to explain: in rugby union, if Team A commits a foul but Team B still has the ball, the referee will allow play to continue for a few phases to see whether an advantage develops for Team B. If there is no advantage, he will bring play back and award a penalty for Team B. 

However, the current rules mean that in football, if Team X commits a foul but the player from Team Y stays on his feet, the referee has to decide instantly whether or not there is an advantage for Team Y. He cannot call advantage, and then bring play back if Team Y happen to have a donkey striker who boots the ball into Row Z. They could have had a free kick in a promising position, but instead it is a goal kick to their opposition. The player who stayed on his feet is then criticised by his manager and pundits alike, so next time he will go to ground to avoid criticism. 

However, to reward a player for not toppling like a drunken giraffe, this rule would allow the team who have suffered the foul to have a free phase of attack for, say, ten seconds, and be safe in the knowledge that if Torres/Aspas/Welbeck messes the move up, they can go back and have a free kick or even penalty.

4.   Book players for exaggerating a foul - even if there is contact

This would make life so much easier for referees. So often you see players go down when they don’t need to just to highlight the fact that he has been fouled . In my opinion, even if a player has been fouled, if falls over and writhes in agony he is still trying to con the referee into thinking that the contact was worse than it really was, therefore, in my view, this is simulation. For example if a referee spots some shirt-tugging in the area, but the player being pulled back goes down clutching his face and performs the old ‘roll over once, bang the floor twice routine’ and is clearly milking it, the referee could give his side a penalty and book the player for simulating a contact that didn't happen.

So there you have it. 4 simple and yet quite brilliant solutions to stamping out diving. Easy, eh?