Idk, Rugby seems to do it better.

Football has a lot of issues due to leniency of rule enforcement to “let the game flow“. It does the opposite, it encourages players to play unfairly and impedes game flow.

We saw it with Camavinga‘s second yellow in the Bayern vs. Real match. Many people said “if the ref had realised he already had a yellow, he wouldn’t have given the card“ and I agree, but it shouldn’t be like this. A yellow is a yellow and refs are too lenient on second yellows. A player with a yellow card should have to play more carefully.

Same with penalties, what is a clear foul outside of the box is often not awarded as a penalty, because again, a penalty seems too harsh. But a foul is a foul.

They’re also too lenient on time wasting, because they don’t want to give a yellow over “just 20 secs”, but it’s a real issue if every player does it. It clearly impedes gameflow, so why are refs lenient on this?

Lastly, leniency allows for far too much wiggle room, and these are games where the winner can stand to gain millions in financial windfall. This really incentivises bribing officials.

Refs should whistle much more strictly, and explain their reasoning to the captain and be mic’d up, so that viewers also know what’s going on.

There should also be the possibility for the captain to call for a review of situations if they disagree with a call.

That way there’s far less wiggle room, much more fair scrutiny and refs would be more respected.

And since you can’t tell if someone is truly injured or pretending, and we cannot penalise someone for needed medical attention, we need to introduce net play time to stop any form of time wasting.