There have been profound changes to the way play is managed in football in the last generation and the game is a better spectacle as a consequence.
From the outlawing of both tackles from behind and the back pass, through to a more stringent interpretation of what constitutes a foul. In my view at least, these measures have improved football as a spectator sport because they have rewarded skill and punished those who seek to stifle it.
I'd broadly agree with this suggested measure because it would diminish the benefit that teams derive from something that is, at the very least, unedifying and irritating to the neutral observer. At worst it is outright cheating. Moreover, the current system is both hopelessly inaccurate and manifestly arbitrary and therefore unfair and contrary to the wider interests of the game.
I suspect many of those who always bemoan change in the game would find nineteenth centrury football to be unwatchable. The notion that a sport cannot and will not change and evolve is absurd. It suggests that those who devised a particular game many decades ago were infallible and had god-like powers of prescience.
Some people simply don't like change, whatever form it takes.
