the expert opinion!

me and doctor watched the world cup final game last night on our projector. it was the first for both of us. yet, doctor knows the rules and he was trying to explain the game to me.

i admit i was hoping germany to win. not only because, eh, finland and germany are on the same continent, but because germans have so effectively abolished their sense of national pride. i just thought it would be healthy for them to face the situation of winning world cup and the discomfort mixed with joy that it may bring. but i did assume they need to give in and just rejoice over the victory. i have not followed media enough to see if that actually happened though.

something that i paid attention to in the game was all the wasted time these guys are laying on the grass "hurt". flopping, i think its called. a lot of precious game time...since they dont ever stop the clock. especially this one german guy, Schweinsteiger...  come on. even in the last 2 minutes (the extra time granted for all the flops) he found himself face first in the grass...  perhaps since football itself does not interest me greatly, i spent a disproportionate amount of time wondering how to fix the situation. i have a couple of suggestions:

• if a player spends more than 5 seconds on the ground, he should be out. kind of like in boxing. i mean, if you cannot get up in 5 seconds (which is a long time in the end), you MUST be badly hurt, no? in that case, yeah, you should be exchanged to another player. i know there is 3 player rule with exchanges, we would then need to change that too, and i dont see how that would be a problem. but i think the 5 second rule would effectively keep the flops more minimal, although they would still happen.
• if a player flops 3 times within a game, he should be out. because either he is clumsy and therefor deserves to be out (lol), or again, after falling 3 times, he cannot be in a condition to play. i could see a rival team trying to trip important players then, like hey, "let's get Messi out", but that would become a vicious circle im sure, so i actually think the players might start controlling themselves there (bit like in hockey). 
• everytime a player flops, give them both (the supposed "aggressor" and the "victim") a yellow card. here, the team who wants to take "Messi" out can share the yellow cards, but againi believe this would lead in such a vicious circle that the players would start self-regulating. i guess this theory would have to be tested small scale before implemented. 

all of the above ideas would give the players an incentive to stay on their feet rather than roll around. at some point during last nights match i even felt like the game wasnt being played by moving the ball around but by flopping and fishing for fouls.

also, whats boring is the small number of goals.