It's almost routine - a red card for violent conduct in a youth game

Game 32-33, 2019-20

"If the poor, insulted mothers only knew how many fights they were responsible for instigating on the football fields of Germany every weekend..." So began one of my paragraphs in the disciplinary report that followed Sunday's U17 boys game. 

Call someone a 'bastard', and they might get shirty, but they don't scream, "Are you saying my mum and dad weren't married when I was born?" Call someone a wanker and they might be pissed off, but they don't get right in your face and yell, "Are you implying that I indulge in acts of self-gratification? ARE YOU?" Yet call someone a son of a whore, and they immediately think that you are insulting their mother and freak out in her defence. This insult is apparently personal in a way that being a bastard or a wanker is not. I'm not saying any of these terms are acceptable on the football field (they're not), but this last one really seems to set the place on fire...

A radical change to the Offside Law for the amateur game

Game 31, 2019-20

For amateur games where there are no neutral and qualified linesmen/assistant referees, I propose that the International Football Association Board (IFAB) add the following clauses to Law 11, Offside:

* Any team that attempts to influence the referee's decision by appealing for offside, either verbally or through gestures such as raising an arm, automatically renders the opposing player in an onside position. In this way, the unsportsmanlike conduct of the defending team directly benefits the attacking team.

* All attempts to influence the referee's decision with regard to offside decisions shall be classified as unsporting conduct, and be punishable with a caution (or a ten-minute time penalty in leagues that operate sin-bins).

* Any protest from an attacking player deemed by the referee to be in an offside position will likewise be punishable with a caution. 

This would be a radical change to the law, but it would make an immense difference to refereeing at the lowest levels of the game, where there is a serious lack of the necessary three match officials for the following two reasons:

Buffalos, Baby Bulls and Headless Geese - Gegenpressing in the Amateur Game

Games 27-30, 2019-20

As teams warm up for the resumption of competitive league play, there's a rash of men's friendlies as the players try to get back into shape following the winter break. Many coaches seem to have spent their weeks away from the sideline studying the masters, and have decided that the best way to approach the second half of the season is with a spanking new tactical system they ripped off an Internet Chalkboard of Football Wisdom.

Gegenpressing

In practice, this currently means following the vogue for Pressing and Gegenpressing. Game pattern: for the first five minutes, let the opposition pass the ball around the back four. Next 40 minutes, yell "Pressure!" and send the forwards and midfield into hectic spoiler mode. There follow about 600 changes of possession, and almost as many fouls, as decidedly amateur players attempt to implement The Klopp Doctrine. Instead of looking like European champions, though, the teams look like decapitated geese in the farm yard after the puddles have frozen overnight. It's not so much Kick and Rush as Chicken Rush...

Finally, leadership from the top on dissent

Games 25-26, 2019-20

During the winter break the German FA issued a set of instructions to its top flight referees regarding dissent, diving, time-wasting and aggressive behaviour towards referees. It reiterated that each offence on its long list was to be punished with a yellow card. The instructions were passed down the chain of command to all amateur referees. And so to my weekend.

Saturday afternoon: A boys U19 game between the second placed team (at home, in white) and the third (away, in black), separated only by goal difference. As we line up, I mention the new guidelines, and warn them that any kind of dissent will be punished with a yellow card. But these are teenage boys, and they probably need to be told at least 15 times before they take the information on board. In the eighth minute comes the first caution, for the forward on the white team who protests loudly about me calling his foul on a defender. In the 12th. minute comes the second yellow card, for a defender on the black team yelling at me for not giving what he insists was an offside call. The rest of the half is quiet.

In the second half, the game heats up...