New IFAB rules: silence and still penalties

The VAR, the effective time, the semi-automatic offside, the rechargeable ball, finally the new IFAB rules [1] which will be introduced from the 2023/24 season and surgically curtail the role of goalkeepers in penalty shoot-outs: These are the new Rules to put it better i new provisions of the regulation a game was spontaneous, real and instinctive. What do these rules tell us? Everyone inevitably says – how he would say Pope Francis – “not an age of change, but a change of times”, paranoid as a calculator.

Again, while we’re tired of repeating ourselves at this point in the debate, the problem isn’t the consequences, it’s the basis of these rules. What do they represent? The totally postmodern zeal to control chaos, to rule it First – in a word, making human technology (AI) non-tech capable. Where are we going in terms of football? But the question is misplaced: where do we gosoccer? Football is a male sport here. Or rather, it should be. And what is man but fallibility, cunning, fall, power and vulnerability? With all these changes, isn’t there a risk of corrupting the sport by turning it into something unrelated?

In this particular case and in view of the new IFAB rules for goalkeepers, why not replace the goalkeeper with a latest generation robot at this point during the penalty shootout?

«New IFAB rules for penalty kicks in 2026: Goalkeepers must turn their backs when taking a shot. A defense is awarded an indirect free kick.”

Mike Maignan, 03/26/2023 / Twitter

Among the scintillating new rules – mostly Don Abbondio-style clarifications on the current rule – tossed out by the IFAB, Mike Maignan (number one in every sense) is apparently referring to the one that reads: “Penalty kicks: The goalkeeper must stay on the goal linein front of the player, between the posts, without touching the barsthe bar or goal until the ball is kicked. The goalkeeper must not act in a way that unfairly distracts the playere.g. delaying the execution of the kick or touching the post, crossbar or goal. The goalkeeper must not behave in a way that disrespects the game and the opponent, ie does not distract the player unjustly.”

Congratulations. It was hard to ruin one of the last moments Pure soccer: The IFAB was successful. Who knows what Jorge Valdano thinks about it Futbolandia’s dream, P. 144, wrote: «A penalty kick needs all the ingredients that make up football (pitch, ball, goal, player, referee), but its laws are not those of the game. It’s a primary action that doesn’t express football but rather mutilates it, and yet it doesn’t reduce but rather concentrate the emotions. The struggle between communities becomes a duel. One on one. The duel». Poor romantic fool of Valdano, but who do you think you are?! You and your game poetry. The game is calculation, justice, study, practically a game of chess.

You can see it Emiliano Dibu Martinez remains motionless on the goal-line, possibly remaining silent as a fly in the sweet anticipation of a goal conceded – the goalkeeper’s equivalent of one Before repeated death over time. What happens with these new rules that theatre (individual and community together) the lottery – a term that obviously needs to be revised – Penalties? Eleven meters, birth and scaffold at the same time, depending on the perspective of those experiencing it, who, with these new rules, are five, at most six, steps from a practically safe exit.

In fact, it is clear to everyone – or at least those who have played football – that taking a penalty is not technically difficult, it is only (or almost) psychologically difficult. Just think of Silvestri’s three saved penalties against Ibrahimovic, the sentences spoken Dibu in the semifinals against Colombia to Yerry Mina, more generally to the ancient and sacred tricks of the keeper’s craft, innocent victim until proof (and solution) Opposite. Who is the goalkeeper is crazy: criminal and devilish who wants to destroy the epic.

[1] The IFAB is the international body responsible for setting the rules of football. One could almost ask: Because of what? Who and how intervenes in the regulation?