Changing the six second rule is a zero sum game eroding the old school from football.
- nouorder
- Mar 8
- 3 min read
Updated: Mar 10
Alan Shearer wheels away after scoring an indirect free kick in the box during an England World Cup qualifying win over Georgia. (Credit: Planet Football)
There’s something about goals scored from indirect free kicks in the box that’s always seemed strange. Like a glitch in the system.
A rule change to come into force next season; goalkeepers holding the ball for eight seconds (up from six) will result in a corner (rather than the current awarding of an indirect free kick).
If Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result, then what is doing something different in order to solve a problem, when you don’t even use the current solution?
That’s the unanswered question with this proposed rule change.
The indiscretion is being altered. The punishment is being changed altogether. Why, when we have a rule for that, which isn’t being used?
The change is a bid to speed the game up by deterring goalkeepers holding the ball, but what’s actually the problem that needs to be solved here?
Punishing a team and awarding something to the other side that has no material benefit over the current system is a zero-sum game, given goalkeepers will be able to hold the ball longer than they do under the new rule, before being penalised.
The rule hasn’t been the issue, it’s been the enforcement. FIFA obviously sees the need for a clampdown, so why not empower referees to enforce the current rule? Moreover, why haven’t they been enforcing it more already? Is there a collective and underlying view amongst referees that the punishment is disproportionate to the crime?
Is the new penalty fairer and the hope is it will be enforced more vigilantly? If that’s the idea, there might be a case for it, but the statistics show otherwise.
Season to season, the percentage of goals coming from corners can vary between 10-20%, so it appears attractive to make this the new penance for holding the ball too long. But, given there are so many corners, goals converted from them are low. Three articles, links below, show conversion is a meagre 2-5%.
Indirect free kicks in the box on the other hand, while rarer, yield a similar conversion. Again, it’s not the punishment, it’s the application of the rule. Punish the goalkeeper more consistently, and it will result in more indirect free kicks, and therefore more goals.
In an era when offsides and balls crossing the goal line are determined by technology and teams of referees remote from the action, the six-second rule has remained policed by the man in the middle. Surely technology can assist here too.
In major tennis tournaments, players have a time limit to serve the ball. In basketball, teams have a time limit to get a shot away. On both counts, the clock ticking down is visible for players, spectators, and officials to see. Yet football hasn’t caught up with this.
Most top teams have big screens in their stadiums, and no doubt the technology to have the offsite officials take over and begin a countdown of any length deemed necessary could be put in place. There can be no ambiguity in the crowd when the referee awards an indirect free kick then.
The enforcement of the rule at the elite level may encourage more enforcement down the pyramid also. And whilst the cow patch on the edge of town playing host to a lower league game won’t have a big screen in the corner, or an army of league officials to administer a countdown on it, everyone will know what’s what when the referee shouts “one Mississippi, two Mississippi,” and so on. After all, the introduction of VAR hasn’t undermined lower league or junior football.
But should we be surprised? The edges are being rounded off, but oddness can be beautiful too. Watch any of these goals and tell me it’s not a shame we’ll see less of them in the future.
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