New rules will be adopted in next season’s Premier League to discourage diving. However, Pep Guardiola believes the FA should set other priorities.
The Manchester City manager addressed the news that the FA will take action against players caught diving. The changes will see players be handed bans even if the referee hasn’t sanctioned the incident during the game. The incidents will be reviewed by a panel using television footage of the events.
Players found guilty could face bans of one or two games. The decision was made in an attempt to altogether get rid of attempts to fool the refs. Guardioala thinks there are other elements which could be improved first. The manager encourages introduction of better technology.
“I think diving is not the most important thing to improve. There are many other things we can improve,” Guardiola stated at a news conference. Everybody makes mistakes. Are we going to review the referees? No. It sometimes happens.”
“The referees, the referees they know everything. They are the bosses in those terms. I adapt to the rules, the federation, FIFA, UEFA, what they do for football. It does not matter what I say. My influence and my opinion do not count. Whatever they decide, we are going to accept and we are going to accept the bans and the cases.“
Guardiola believes that the technology helping the referee during the game needs to improve. In this way better decisions could be made on the spot. Even when bans are offered, results of the game are still affected by bad decisions. The Spanish manager also points out that some conditions have changed a lot during recent years.
“The technology will help the referees to be fairer about what happens in the game to make fewer mistakes because there are a lot of mistakes. Football today is quicker, it is faster. Before referees arrive to see a situation, the players are much, much faster, that is why they need technology,” Guardiola went on to say.
“There are mistakes but not because the referees are bad. The players used to run six kilometres a game, now it is 12 kilometres. It is double. Today we have to be better prepared. The referees do not have to improve, it is just that the game is quicker.”
All things considered, let’s just remember this for a moment:
