Fouls, Flopping and Game Time....

Watching soccer again after long....all my old frustrations with the game seem to be coming back up...used to hate all the flopping, the power given to the referee (and the damage done by wrong calls) and the time wasting tactics (which include flopping and delaying throws and kicks, substitutions etc.)

But we do have solutions for all these currently in other games which could work very well here.

Fouls are managed pretty well with the current yellow-red card system, but there is no real review happening of what actually happened. The TV viewers see that it was or was not a foul, but the referee's decisions stands. Something similar to the NFL's coach's challenge should work very well here. Every time the coach suspects there is a wrong decision, they can throw the challenge flag, and the decision is reviewed "upstairs". To prevent too many challenges, the team loses a timeout for a wrong challenge - but we don't have timeouts in soccer - so maybe have a set number of challenges like tennis players are given - maybe just 2 wrong challenges per half and any number of correct ones.

As far as flopping and time wasting tactics - this could easily be fixed by moving to a play clock as in basketball or many other games - not a running game clock . Maybe overall time can be cut from 45 to 35 or 40. Clock stops for out of bounds, goal scores, foul whistles, substitutions etc - any time the game is stopped, clock stops. And game stops exactly at 40:00 - no extra time given. If a ball is in air towards goal, that can be saved or counted if it goes in.

It will also be very good to have the ref call out every decision - we do not yet know if the ref denying USA's 3rd goal called an offside, or foul, and if foul, on which player. Again from NFL - every decision on field is announced by the lead referee to the stadium on mic and TV.