Serie A’s Own Penalty Box?

By: Martha | July 31st, 2007

Yo yo yo! Sepp Blatter has been talking for a while about the idea of a “sin bin” in football, a place where players who commit certain offenses — specifically diving or faking injury — would serve short (five-or-so minute) penalties. Though at this point very few people tend to put much stock in what Blatter says, newly appointed referee designator Pierluigi Collina is as close to infallible as it gets in Italy (apart from the Pope, I mean), and now that he’s endorsed Blatter’s idea, it’s likely to start getting a lot more serious attention.

It’s unclear to me how this will work, but I love the idea. Remember last season, when someone (Adriano, I think) was suspended after getting a post-game card for a dive that was confirmed only on video? Well, it’s only that sort of thing that’s going to make people stop with the faking — periodic cards from particularly ballsy officials just aren’t enough; punishments must immediately hurt the team as a whole, not just the player. But how would it work? Would refs pull out cards and hand out five minute penalties all at once? Or would they be applied in subsequent games, based on video analysis?

Reading between the lines, it appears that what Collini would prefer is someone away from the pitch who hands out penalties, so that the on-pitch officials don’t find themselves “overload[ed] … with more responsibility.” That sounds like a great start, because the officials have more than enough to do just dealing with the game and Moggi and his ilk. But will there be a time-limit, or something? For example, if a player goes down in the 32nd minute and the event is reviewed by officials with a TV monitor, will they need to communicate a penalty to the referee within, say, five minutes, or could it come in the 83rd, after someone watches the video 131 times and decides it was a dive? Because something like that will inevitably lead to a whole lot of very reasonable complaints.

For this to work, I think Collina and his posse are going to need to spend an entire season analyzing matches and determining the best, fairest way to work a penalty box. Because, if they’re going to do it, it needs to be as perfect as possible from the moment it’s initiated. If it’s not, it’ll be nothing but the target of mocking without two weeks, and gone before Christmas.