With their constant desire to make football “better” I suspect the people that run the game have started to forget one golden rule – if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

The latest – and apparently impending – change to the sport is going to come in the form of sin bins.

Football’s rule making body, IFAB, will be considering the introduction of sin bins during a meeting next month. And the word on the street is that they will be given the green light.

For those of you who don’t know what a sin bin is, it is basically a naughty step for footballers. Do something bad during a football match, but not bad enough to warrant a red card, and you will be sent to sit down and think about what you’ve done while watching all your friends having fun.

They have already been tested in some Uefa competitions, and the plan is, apparently, to introduce them at youth and amateur levels first before bringing them in at the top level in a couple of years.

No IFAB, please don’t!

Some people argue that the current system is flawed. A player can carry out a bad tackle in one game, get a yellow card and carry on playing. And then, only after he has accumulated several of them, does he get a ban. This means that a crime carried out against one team could ultimately give an advantage to another team a few weeks down the line when he is suspended.

And I get that logic.

But surely the primary aim of a yellow card is to serve as a warning. A way of telling the player what they just did was stupid and that if they step out of line again they are going to be having a very lonely shower.

Getting banned for an accumulation of cards is meant to be a deterrent to stop players making a habit of bad tackles. It doesn’t particularly work – think Lee Bowyer, who amassed 99 in his Premier League career – but that is whole different story.

Sin bans are, by their very nature, designed to hand the opponents of the naughty player an instant advantage. Which is a great concept at face value, but if you look a little deeper, one that could have potentially dire consequences on the purity of the game.

How often do you hear experts, pundits and commentators saying a game has been ruined by a sending off? Just about every time a red card is shown.

So what do the football authorities do? They find a way to make sure that just about every game will have periods, possibly long periods, of 10 versus 11 players.

It just doesn’t make sense.

If a player who gets a yellow is automatically sent to the bin, then we could see matches descending into eightversus seven madness

And where would that leave games like last season’s epic between Chelsea and Tottenham Hotspur? A feisty encounter like that could end up with more match officials on the pitch than players.

If a player who gets a yellow is automatically sent to the bin, then we could see matches descending into eight versus seven madness. Any team managed by Sam Allardyce would need to do a lot of five-a-side training.

You often hear people say these bins work brilliantly well in rugby. Which is fair enough. But so does picking the ball up and running with it. Should we introduce that too?

Football has flaws. Lots of them. But those flaws are what makes it such a unique and fascinating sport.

Introducing idea after idea to perfect the beautiful game could very well be what ends up making it ugly.

How about closing the window… for good?

As the dust settles on yet another dull and uninspiring January transfer window, you have to wonder if we really need it.

I mean, does it, in fact, actually serve a purpose other than to ensure football agents don’t run out of Cuban cigars and champagne by May?

I’ve had a little look through the deals made last month and the vast majority of them smack of desperation – clubs either trying to avoid relegation or attempting to boost a flagging promotion drive.

On that basis you have to suspect that this transfer window does little more than encourage teams to spend money they don’t really have, chasing a dream that isn’t likely to come true.

I’m not saying clubs in either of those two positions should just resign themselves o their fate and plan for going down or prepare to miss out on going up. Not at all.

But maybe if there wasn’t a transfer window in the middle of the season they might try to find solutions a bit closer to home – like in the reserve and youth teams.

Unearthing young stars is getting harder and harder, not because there are less of them around but because clubs are happier to splash millions on a player that has been broken in by another club than give their own lads a chance.

And having a transfer window that is only really embraced by the desperate and overly ambitious is merely serving to encourage this suppression of young talent.

That’s my opinion, anyway. It may well change when Sheffield United are battling relegation from the Premier League and need a new striker in the January sales.

So sometime in 2037.

It couldn’t happen to a nicer guy

So what is the nicest sight in football?

Is it Cristiano Ronaldo curling a free kick into the top corner? Is it Lionel Messi swerving his way around the entire opposing team? Is it that unpronounceable Manchester United player scorpion-kicking his way to fame?

Nope.

They are all delightful in their own way, of course, but none of them compares to my current favourite: watching Diego Costa miss a penalty.

The look on his face when Simon Mignolet saved his rather pathetic attempt last Tuesday night was priceless.

For the briefest of moments the smugness was gone, and in its place was the look of a man who was shaking hands with karma. A tiny slice of payback for all the theatrics, diving, moaning and referee baiting he has built a career on.

Costa is a great striker, possibly even a brilliant one. But the package of nonsense that is wrapped around his talent is just too irritating.

On that basis I fully intend to enjoy those rare occasions when he steps up to take a penalty in the belief he is one of the greats but ends up looking like Andy Cole…

sportscolumnist@timesofmalta.com
Twitter: @maltablade