Rugby has the captain only speaks to the ref rule and it works fine. Refs don't seem to have any issue controlling rugby games and there is little to no talking back to the ref and none of the histrionics that you see in soccer. Seems to me that players emulate their "heroes", so if the kids see the best in the world, the best at club level and all other (adults) in between play without talking back to the ref, then they copy that ... versus soccer!!
For whatever reason there seems to be more decorum in rugby. Maybe In part because of a historical soccer culture vs. rugby culture?
Maybe culture, but more I think that coaches & players will push the boundaries and try to get away with whatever they can. Rugby is strict and no nonsense, soccer is not and generally inconsistent. I don't buy into the "Rugby, a thug's sport played by gentlemen; Soccer, a gentleman's sport played by thugs." narrative.
It does work very well. Usually during the first two weeks of the season there are a good number of soft-yellow and yellow cards. After the teams have played a couple games and get the soft-yellow reminder, we see dissent and cautionable fouls decrease. We also see an increase in goals scored while teams are playing down due to players off for the soft-yellow. Overall the games seem to flow smoothly without the dissent and reckless fouls. This is a military league with players that are in good shape, know the game, have skills and a lot of type-A personalities, so these guys want to win. Definitely not a beer league since alcohol is prohibited at the field.
In most of the leagues kids can be suspended for a game due to accumulation of yellows. It sucks for the kids who had to "take one for the team" (or take five for the team, I guess) vs. the kids who were truly acting recklessly.
Wouldn't work in MLS Next, though because once you're off, you're off. And it ECNL I think you have to stay off for the rest of the half.
It would just be a tweak to the MLSN/ECNL rules though, so no reason not to work.
Inconsistency is definitely a big factor.
I'm hardly a rugby expert, but from what I've seen there is more of a cooperative relationship between ref and player and the ref is more of a facilitator of the game whereas in soccer the ref acts more as the disciplinarian and the relationship between players and refs is more adversarial. (This is a generalization, there are exceptions to every rule, and I've found the best soccer refs are those that rely heavily on instructive verbal communication.)
At the top level, the refs are mic'd up, so you can hear everything on the field. It can also be played realtime, so you know what's being said etc.
Maybe more opportunities to communicate in rugby as it seems there are more restarts and they tend to involve more players in a consolidated area where soccer players are spread out.
Yeah, different game and different cadence. I do think there's potential there though - people seem to always focus on the "why it can't" rather than "why it can", e.g. above someone said it couldn't work in MLSN/ECNL due to reentry rules, versus implementing it would have to be aligned with a tweak to the reentry rules in MLSN/ECNL ...
While I agree with your "can't" vs. "can" sentiment, in this case I don't get past the "Why?". I'm never a fan of adding rules or laws when there already exists rules or tools to deal with the situation. There are better ways to handle dissent as we discussed and now we're going to have to have IFAB define "cynical" and "tactical" and refs have to interpret it. We have great debates over fouls being yellow and red, and now we're adding a third color? We've seen IFAB completely FUBAR "handball" rules. If you want to do a "sin bin", a better option would be to just to do it with a yellow, although 5 min is too long in my mind.
I disagree with the any changes related to cynical/tactical. Its way too subjective, esp. on the latter.
They did this for head injuries, but head injuries are harder to fake...
