One of the lingering regulations from the Covid-19 era of football has been the increase from three to five substitutes being allowed for managers with games going into extra time allowing one more if the quota has been used.
To complicate matters further, half-time doesn’t count as one of the three limited windows for making changes either as part of the new guidelines.
As someone who has also followed rugby for years, it always frustrates me how football hasn’t looked at how they implement VAR in terms of video playback in the stadium and being able to hear the officials discussing possible infringements or, only allowing the captains to speak to the officials. What gets me even more though, is how football – after a couple of seasons – still isn’t using the five subs rule properly.
In rugby, there will be some players who know that they are coming off after 50 minutes in pre-determined changes, this means that you can have players playing at a higher intensity for a shorter period of time, and yet, football managers still wait until the last 1o-15 minutes before turning to their bench.
Michael Beale, as reported by The Rangers Review, has explained what he likes about having the extra options and how he sees it developing moving forward:
“I do like the five subs. It gives you, as a coach, lots of options. Certainly, if you’re on the bench you feel like you’re closer to getting on because of the amount you can make.
“You can also make a bit of a pig’s ear of it as well if you’re not careful. You can mess a game up but I like it.
“I think players over the next few years in all clubs are going to be used to playing 70 minutes and coming out which they don’t like.”
Personally, I’d rather see that 70 minutes come down to 60. If you want to play with a higher intensity – especially in midfield – it is the simplest solution. I’m still surprised that opposition teams in the Premiership set up with ten men behind the ball when they could be more aggressive and put more pressure on our defence seeing as they can replace half of their outfield players.
Football might be the world’s biggest game but we don’t half struggle to stay with the times and modernise. I mean, it took until the ’90s to introduce the no pass-back law and VAR about 20 years after every other sport.