The Penalty (a suggestion)

The rules of Association Football are over a hundred years old but rarely need a revamp. Of course recent improvements in technology have meant an increase in calls for fairer methods to ensure that the original rules are applied more thoroughly. Some may beg to differ since the original rules envisaged a fallible human as referee and not a robot or techno eye in the sky. Having said that you do often get a hunch that the rules of the game could do with a bit of polishing up – which is why the busybodies behind J’accuse (that’s the Royal We) have come up with an alternative use for penalties within the 90 minutes of the game (and possibly also within the 30 minutes of extra time).

The inspiration behind this audacious suggestion is the hunch that all too often penalties seem too harsh a meter with which to mete out punishment to the team having (a) fouled an opponent; (b) handballed  or (c) committed whatever other outrageous crime within the deisgnated area. We also considered the problem of the “penalty seekers” – those strikers or midfielders who float into the penalty box with the deliberate intent to obtain a penalty in their favour by hook or, as is more often the case, by crook.

As with all suggestions to change a century old way of thinking and applying the rules the J’accuse Penalty Rule will of course be as controversial a suggestion as any other but we urge you to look at this option as objectively as you can. Here goes.

Essentially the rule is as follows. Excepting for penalties in a penalty shoot out, any other penalty awarded in the course of a game and successfully converted does not automatically amount to a score goal. The team having converted a penalty will be awarded the goal if, and only if, the opposing team scores a subsequent goal.

Imagine Red United playing Blue City. The score is 0-0 when at the 15th minute, Oscar, the United attacker is brought to the ground by Hatchet, the City defender and the referee points to the spot. Puntov duly converts the penalty. At that point the score remains 0-0 and United are awarded a ghost goal that will only figure on the score sheet should City score a goal in the next seventy-five minutes of play.

So if for example City did score in the sixtieth minute then the score would automatically be 1-1. Even if the Reds had scored more goals in the meantime, let’s say two goals after the converted penalty and City score when Reds are 2-0 up then the score is transformed to 3-1.

This rule would transform the penalty into a defensive rather than attacking bonus in the sense that the team converting the first penalty has not automatically won the match with the penalty but obliges the other team to attack and cancel out the potential conversion.

In order to avoid the abuse of this rule by defences (fouling to keep the match at 0-0) then we could add that two converted penalties would amount to a score independently of whether the other team manages to score a goal in the interim. I.E. two ghost goals = one normal goal.

I know it sounds complicated but for starters it is far simpler than the offside rule and given the low-scoring nature of todays’ game it has an added incentive:

1) Penalties risk being less decisive on the end result – favouring in game goals.

2) The team conceding a penalty is statistically often the more defensive of the two. The rule obliges it to take on a more attacking mentality and avoid the consequences of the penalty.

What do you think?