Is it time up for football's deliberate delays?

Football could be on the brink of some significant changes and, whisper it quietly, most of them look like they could actually be for the better.

Football’s rule-makers IFAB met last week to discuss a raft of new proposals aimed at improving the sport, many directed towards tackling one of its most persistent problems – deliberate delaying tactics.

Encouragingly, the focus of IFAB’s meeting was on the simple stuff, the everyday nonsense that slowly drains the life out of matches.

Take substitutions, for example. They are obviously a necessary and integral part of the modern game. But they are also a massively convenient way of wasting time. Some take so long you forget who is playing by the time they are completed. Clean-shaven players see their number go up on the board but have full-on beards by the time they make it to the sidelines.

The idea is brutally straightforward. Get substituted, leave the pitch within the time limit or your replacement waits until the next break in play to enter the game. It’s a rule designed to reveal the truth about late game ‘cramp’, because nothing cures it faster than the threat of your team playing with 10 men.

The same thinking applies to throw-ins and goal-kicks, where the idea of extending countdown-style limits has been floated to stop players treating every restart like a moment of quiet philosophical reflection. Good. If you need 30 seconds to take a throw, you’re not managing the game, you’re avoiding it.

Then there’s the goalkeeper ‘injury’ – football’s most transparent tactical timeout. Pressure builds, the manager wants a word, and the keeper slumps to the ground holding some random part of his anatomy that suddenly, inexplicably, requires urgent medical attention.

Substitutions are obviously a necessary and integral part of the modern game. But they are also a massively convenient way of wasting time

One of the ideas being explored here is delightfully awkward. Right now, when an outfield player gets treatment, he is required to stay off the pitch for 30 seconds after he is walked off by the physio.

That can’t be applied to goalkeepers as it would leave an empty net (although that would be very entertaining, come to think of it); so IFAB is looking at making an outfield player temporarily leave the pitch on the goalkeeper’s behalf.

In other words, if you want to get yourself an impromptu team talk, the price you pay is being a man down for a period of time. Miraculously, those spontaneous goalkeeper injuries may start clearing up.

Not everything IFAB discussed made it through the meeting unscathed. Arsene Wenger’s ‘daylight offside’ has been parked in its current form, which is a shame for anyone tired of goals being ruled out by elbows and armpits.

Still, the fact that IFAB continues to explore alternative offside interpretations is a good sign, with moving the offside ruling to the torso, rather than the limbs, being the favoured approach at this point.

It’s worth saying, before anyone get too excited, that none of this is law yet. These are ideas that still need to be ratified, refined and, in some cases, tested. Direction matters, though, and the direction here is largely encouraging.

And then, because it can’t all be good news, comes VAR.

IFAB is also planning to expand reviews to include second yellow cards and corners. Just what football needed... more moments where 60,000 people stand around in existential silence while someone in front of a TV makes a decision that is still going to be open to interpretation.

And that’s the irony here. The authorities are considering bringing in a raft of sensible changes to remove deliberate delays and stop players faking injuries with the overall objective of speeding up the game.

Yet simultaneously they are looking at giving VAR more powers that will, whether they like it or not, slow things back down again.

It’s a funny old game.

A nice but shallow gesture

Manchester City’s players deserve credit for at least acknowledging that something went badly wrong in Norway.

After their shock 3-1 defeat to minnows Bodø/Glimt in the Champions League, senior figures in the squad agreed to refund the cost of match tickets to the travelling supporters who made the trip north of the Arctic Circle.

It is, on the surface, a classy gesture. An admission that what unfolded on that pitch in freezing conditions simply was not acceptable and the 374 City fans who turned up deserved better.

But let’s keep some perspective.

At around £25 a ticket, the total refund comes in at just over £9,000. Split across a squad earning tens of millions a year, that’s about the equivalent of five minutes work apiece.

Also, for the supporters, the ticket was the cheapest part of the experience. Flights, hotels, transfers, food and time off work are where the real cost sits. That is what fans feel when nights like Bodø go wrong.

Supporters will appreciate the sentiment behind this refund because any move that goes beyond a social media apology and a promise to ‘go again’ is going to be welcomed.

But this was pocket change wrapped in good PR. A nice gesture, certainly. Just not the meaningful sacrifice those fans really deserved.

AFCON fails to hit the spot

The Africa Cup of Nations final is meant to be the night the continent’s football stands up straight and tells the world it doesn’t need charity, caveats or context. Just watch this. Watch the talent. Watch the noise.

Instead, last Sunday’s final managed the rare trick of making the football feel like an optional extra – a showcase event that unravelled so badly it ended up advertising every stereotype African football has spent years trying to outrun.

Senegal walking off the pitch over a stoppage-time VAR decision should have been unthinkable. Instead, it became the defining image of the night. Officials huddled, tempers frayed, fans edging towards the pitch and benches emptied. For long spells, it felt less like a continental final and more like a family wedding where someone has casually mentioned inheritance.

That’s the real frustration. African football isn’t short of quality. It’s drowning in it. What keeps letting it down is the boring stuff. The basics.

A final should leave you arguing about goals and heroes. This one left everyone arguing about behaviour, control and how it all managed to unravel so badly. Senegal won, but lost goodwill along the way. Morocco didn’t emerge spotless either.

And African football missed a golden chance to let the football do the talking.

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