How to save football from whiners and divers like Ronaldo

Marco van Basten’s ideas to improve the game are a mixed bag but some will work.

Imagine a football match where there is no arguing with the referee. No deliberate fouling, no diving, no feigning injury, no time wasting. A match where the players play like grown ups, not cry babies and cheats.

FIFA has tried to tidy the game up before without success.

Now they’ve appointed Dutch legend Marco van Basten as a technical director to look at the problems.

Van Basten can’t do worse than ex president Sepp Blatter, whose suggestions to improve the game included solving on field racism with a handshake, a ban on matches at altitude, breaking games into four periods, and a real doozy, tighter shorts for women. Yes, really.

Van Basten’s ideas have met with a mixed reception.

Arguing with the ref? Only the captain should be allowed to talk to the ref.

This would certainly erase the awful spectacle of four or six players hounding the ref, but then again, nutcases like Roy Keane can terrorise the ref all on their own.

Verdict: No one talks to the ref, unless he talks to you first.

Van Basten wants to add the sin bin to the ref’s disciplinary arsenal. Not original, but a good idea.

Currently, players happily commit yellow card offences because a yellow card doesn’t hurt. Ten minutes on the sideline is a better deterrent.

Another legend Glenn Hoddle, himself the owner of interesting ideas, eg disabled people are paying for the sins of a former life, and having a faith healer on his staff, disagrees.

He feels a team with a player sin binned would just hunker down and defend for 10 minutes of boring football. Verdict: Bring in the bin. Time wasting has infuriated players, coaches and fans ever since the watch was invented. Thirty seconds to take a goal kick. Ninety for a free kick. Three minutes to treat an ‘‘injured’’ player.

Van Basten suggests that in the last ten minutes of matches, when time wasting is worst, the clock stops every time the ball goes dead.

Good idea, but why not use the stop-clock for the whole match?

Anyone who saw Uruguay waste time from minute one of their World Cup playoff second leg in Australia in 2005, as they tried to protect a 1-0 lead from the first leg, knows time wasting isn’t restricted to the last ten minutes.

Verdict: Do it. A 90 minute match would take two hours, so shorten it to 70.

Offside has infuriated players, coaches and fans ever since the linesman’s flag was invented.

It’s used by teams to stifle the game, and besides, it’s just too hard to get right. Too many games are won and lost on the errant flagging of the linesmen.

Van Basten wants to flag offside to open the game up. Hoddle wants to keep it, both for aesthetic reasons (Hoddle says teams will resort to ugly long ball tactics) and because football without offside is like cornflakes without the milk.

A German magazine staged a match without offside, and gave it a thumbs down.

The penalty boxes were clogged up and the linesmen had nothing to do!

Verdict: Keep offside, but use video technology to remove the bad calls.

Halves or quarters? Van Basten, possibly with Blatter in his ear, suggests the game be played in quarters, to give coaches more chances to influence their teams.

But the real winners would be the advertisers. Verdict: Say no to Coke. Van Basten hasn’t commented yet on two of the game’s biggest problems.

Refereeing mistakes are influencing too many games, and though many see such blunders as part of the game, why should teams suffer bad calls when the technology exists to get them right?

And second, cheating and gamesmanship are ruining football.

It could be virtually eliminated with the use of video referees, who could issue red cards the day after the game.

‘‘Hello, Real Madrid? Red card Ronaldo. Diving.* 23rd minute.’’

In his day, Marco van Basten was football’s best striker, deciding many a game with his deadly finishing. Let’s see if he makes a difference in his new role.

*Diving should be upgraded from a yellow card to red.