Football is now too big and toxic for decisions to be accepted in good faith | Jonathan Liew

Anger at technology and refereeing decisions is overblown but comes from the right place – a mistrust in the authorities

Anyway, we gave it a good run. It probably had to be tried. But now it’s time to admit that the best course of action may just be to scrap the whole thing. Bin it entirely. Too much controversy, too much pointless squabbling, too much bad blood and bad faith. And above all the overwhelming sensation that, in the pursuit of endless minuscule improvements, we lost something vital and elemental, the little spark of joy that brought us all here in the first place.

I refer of course to “football”, one of the world’s oldest and best-loved sports, but which for all its original good intentions is surely no longer fit for purpose. I know it feels like a backward step, given all the time and money invested in it. But even the most one-eyed advocates of “football” must agree that its introduction has been a colossal failure.

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