IFAB law change paves the way for a new era of football captaincy
EURO 2024 trial has started to shift the role of the captain
Stephen Robinson has done a wonderful job as the manager of St Mirren since taking over from Jim Goodwin in 2022.
The Buddies have enjoyed some attention this summer thanks to their return to European competition for the first time in the better part of four decades. Their return has gone to plan so far.
Last week they beat Valur in UEFA Conference League qualifying to set up a tie over the next two Thursdays against Norway's Brann. They started their Premiership season with a handsome win to boot.
Robinson is emerging as a respected manager but he was also a classy footballer, one of my real favourites growing up in Bournemouth, where he was a majestic Football League midfielder for the Cherries – slick, measured and inventive amid the hurly burly of the lower leagues.
He turns fifty in December. If he's still in Europe on his birthday, he'll be waking up to the freedom of Paisley.
IFAB law change paves the way for a new era of football captaincy
If you want an example of the twisted context football supporters apply to referees and dissent, Cristiano Ronaldo’s yellow card while playing for Portugal against Georgia at EURO 2024 is as good a starting point as any.
Ronaldo repeatedly showed himself up in that match, not only obsessed with taking free kicks to a laughable degree but visibly frustrated by what he perceived to be rough treatment by Georgia’s defenders. He was booked for dissent. The extent to which the reaction was one of surprise was telling.
Despite showing few signs that night of being a functioning adult human, Ronaldo was Portugal’s captain. That being the case, he was the only Portugal player permitted to approach and talk to the referee. That so many people were confused that this licence didn’t amount to immunity wasn’t the shock it should have been.
Captain or not, Ronaldo clearly crossed the line into dissent. Indeed, he was fortunate not to be shown a second yellow card later in the game. Thinking he was allowed to behave as he did because he was the skipper is precisely the kind of logic that leads to the acceptance of dissent and abuse towards referees in the first place.
All of this was the consequence of UEFA’s experimental directive that only team captains could speak to the officials, an approach that seemed to work relatively well at the European Championships and was quickly assumed to be heading the way of the Champions League, Europa League and Conference League too. From there, dissemination through the game is unavoidable.
In July, the International Football Association Board – football’s lawmakers – ratified a subtle addition to the Laws of the Game for 2024/25 that had been defined in the spring. Under Law 3, the rules around the team captain now dictate that, “Each team must have a captain on the field of play who wears an identifying armband.”
Law 3.10 already assigned a level of responsibility for a team’s behaviour to its captain but, until now, the requirement for a captain to be identifiable specifically by an armband wasn’t codified. There are also changes to Law 4 that formalise the rules around the nature of the armband but the updated Law 3 could, if taken at face value, have no impact whatsoever. Teams already name captains and captains already wear armbands.
But the nature, timing and probable intent of the updated wording are significant. An updated role for the team captain is on the way and IFAB has now laid the foundations. The refereeing of dissent is in the midst of a fundamental change.
We've already seen it in action in Germany. The captain will be permitted to engage with the officials but no other player will have the same luxury. Those who breach the imminent rule will find themselves on the end of the yellow card already associated with dissent, a clear line drawn under the past. And, of course, the captain will be expected to stay on the right side of the line too.
Assigning the captain to talk to the referee in order to eradicate the much loathed surrounding and haranguing of officials has long been the go-to suggestion for exactly the kind of casual “footy fan” whose opinions I hold in something approaching total contempt. It's an easy thing to say, a colour-by-numbers solution to a tabloid-ready problem.
Dissent is a problem. The issue has been widely documented and debated, from the alarming dehumanisation of referees at the elite level and the creeping acceptance of thinly veiled innuendo to the outright abuse that's putting so many officials out of the game lower down.
It's getting worse year on year. These things tend to be measured using the number of yellow cards issued – see also the farcical data misused to justify sin bins – and all it takes to expose the fallacy is to observe the amount of blatant dissent allowed to slide in any given football match.
I've never been sure the answer was limiting conversation to captains, a proposed fix that's been around far longer than any of its supporting evidence, but I wouldn't oppose this probable change in the Laws of the Game at all.
EURO 2024 was proof enough to try it on a larger scale than just UEFA’s club competitions. Such is the extent of the problem that I feel duty bound to get behind any actions designed to improve the situation.
We probably won’t be waiting long. This is a simple development that’s already in motion. I’d expect it to appear next summer in the Laws of the Game for 2025/26 and it could well land in the form of a directive to referees even before that.
The proof of the pudding is in the eating. Football has repeatedly moved to tackle the scourge of dissent and referee abuse and the success of its tactics has been limited.
Dissent is already a yellow card offence. At the extremes, a sending off is a possibility. We’ve had the Respect campaign, which has implications for dissent, and the aforementioned sin bin sham in the lower reaches of England’s National League System. The data might paint a rosier picture but the lived and observed experience tells another story.
There’s work to be done. Further arming referees is only part of the battle and the impact of any rules that require interpretation will be defined solely by the consistency of their application. If the application of the existing rules is anything to go by, my expectations are modest at best.
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“It’s scandalous and should never have been allowed to get this far. Why should great clubs who have a proud history and identity – in Bordeaux’s case for well over a century, in which they’ve won six French league titles – become nurseries for bigger clubs?
“I don’t know what Bordeaux fans think, but certainly in the UK, I think a lot of fans would rather their club went bust and started again lower down the pyramid than lose their independence and their identity.”
Jonathan Wilson of The Guardian on football’s multi-club model.
Salty beef extracts
Unai Emery led Aston Villa to success. Now he’s making their squad younger (Guardian Sport Network)
What I Learnt Mixing With And Talking To Far Right Football Lads (Political Football)
‘We have our club back’: Southend’s new era begins after years of torment (i)
The quirky German about to unleash ‘heart attack football’ on the Championship (i)
Olympic football: How I would change it (The Full International)
Pre-season success shows little need for Premier games in US (Morning Star)
Dessert
Jude Bellingham is a very famous young man. Very famous young men get signature collections from adidas Originals.
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