About d*mn time

I like the game of soccer, I really do.  I wish fervently that there was a better way to settle really important games (like World Cup elimination games) than the penalty kick shootout if regular time and extra time end with the two teams tied, but that would reduce the attraction of the game for gamblers.

I understand that changing the nature of the game much, i.e., increase the number of goals scored, would make some of the statistics of the game mean less, such as career statistics like the most goals scored.  If anything made it easier to score goals, then the statistic for goal-scoring would become less "comparable" over the decades of history of the sport.   So it's important for scoring goals in soccer to continue to be quite difficult.

But while I still have some ideas to fix some of the game's less attractive aspects, there is one thing that I have really disliked.  That is the three-substitution rule at the highest levels of the sport (meaning professional).  The reason I dislike it is that it forces managers and trainers to make some decisions that may not be in the best interest of the players.  When a player gets injured early in the game, the manager doesn't want to substitute for him unless he has to, because he's saving his substitutions for late in the game when they are strategically important.  Substituting for an injured player early takes away an option for later.

This is particularly disturbing for head injuries that may mean a player has suffered a concussion.  The substitution rule means that managers are tempted to keep a player with a head injury in the game, and they only have a couple of minutes to decide what to do.

That may be changing.  According to the Daily Mail article linked below, the game stewards are considering allowing temporary concussion substitutes that would allow a longer and more thorough evaluation of a player with a head injury.  One of the reasons for this is the recent discovery that professional soccer players apparently have more degenerative nervous and brain system disorders in life than the regular population.  The cited cause of this is the number of headers that they perform in their career - but a couple of concussions can't help, and it is not a very good idea to continue playing after suffering a concussion.

So, like my title says, it's about d*mn time that the game considered making this change.  And they should make the change after considering it.


Football chiefs to consider introducing concussion substitutes after new research reveals former players are three and a half times more likely to die from neurological diseases