Monday, Virginie Phulpin returns to the new rules decreed by Fifa to support the resumption of the football championships. Five changes per match, no refereeing, video ... all this is done only for an aim for our editorial writer, to allow the game economy to regain its rights.
Football has not been exactly the same sport since Friday. Fifa has set up a few rules to facilitate the resumption of championships in different countries. For you, behind the stated desire to protect players, there are still other motivations.
Between the spirit of the game and the economy of the game, it looks like Fifa has chosen. Teams will now be able to make five player changes in a game, instead of three. To avoid injuries after two months without competition. This is the argument of Fifa. Unstoppable, you will tell me. We are finally concerned about the health of the players.
Except that I have the impression that the main motivation is elsewhere. Football is a sport with rules. So either we can resume matches with these rules, we replay football, whatever, or we can not for the moment, and we wait a bit before resuming. Because if not, we can also decide to make matches of 80 minutes and to play fifteen, as long as we are there.
But it's not football anymore. So in fact, the motivation there is the economic interest in resuming the championships, and we are ready to distort football a bit by adapting the rules for a forced restart.
And where are these rules going to stop? Five changes instead of three, which do you think benefits? Big clubs, those with a plethoric workforce, of course. When we have lots of very good players on the bench, it makes it even more spinning. While those with smaller numbers will not be able to follow. It will further widen the gap between the wealthiest clubs and the others.
And I'm ready to bet that the big teams will get used to this new deal, and campaign for the provisional rule to be extended. Fifa even serves them on a plate the argument of the health of the players. That way, the teams could play every other day, and they couldn't even complain.
Another change, until the end of the year, we are no longer obliged to use video arbitration.
Fortunately, all is not all white or all black in the provisional rules of Fifa. VAR becomes optional. It must be said that even those who were for video arbitration at the start realized that it did not bring much. More downtime, but no less controversy. So there, we take advantage of the crisis to put the VAR on the sidelines. Very good. Even if it would be more honest to admit that we were wrong, but we should not ask too much either.
And then it's more anecdotal, but the players will temporarily no longer be able to celebrate their goals by falling into each other's arms. They could also be warned of a yellow card in case of spitting on the lawn. We agree, we must avoid for the moment. And then that's good, we understood that the philosophy of football, at the moment, it was not really to spit in the soup.