On Tuesday local time, the International Football Association Board (IFAB) held a meeting in London to discuss a series of new rules for the game. These include a “sin box” rule: if the referee deems a player to have violated the rules, he will be punished by being temporarily removed from the game for 10 minutes.
Arsenal star Paul Merson said: “Football is different from rugby. If you use the sin box rule in football, you are killing the sport. The punished side will stay in the backfield and the game will become Very boring, they will try to delay as much time as possible to spend these ten minutes. Slowly throwing throws, penalty kicks, and fouls. In short, the slower the better.
“Those people only seem to know the rules, they know nothing about football itself, it just sparks debate! Don’t add new things when you haven’t solved all the problems with the existing rules. For example, if you go to a “You eat pasta in a restaurant and if it tastes bad, you don’t ask the restaurant to take it back and add more toppings, which is totally unhelpful.”