It does seem strange, but there’s some possible rationale behind it. If the rule is not currently being enforced, it could be because refs feel the level of the rule breaking is not proportionate with the level of the punishment. Decreasing the punishment, as well as increasing the severity of the rule breaking required to incur it might induce refs to be more inclined to enforce the punishment.
We’ve seen something similar recently in another type of football. A few years ago, the NRL changed the punishment for minor ruck infringements and defensive offsides in their defensive half from a penalty—which requires the ref to stop the game entirely* and gives an immediate opportunity for a goal kick worth 2 points—to a reset of the tackle count. If that would have been the fifth tackle of their possession (and thus the next one is their last), a ruck infringement resets it to the first. It used to be the case that teams would get away unpunished with all but the most egregious of offences. Now it gets used quite a lot, because the minor offences are met with a comparatively minor punishment.
* as a side note, this should be a goal of all rules and enforcement in all football sports apart from maybe gridiron. And in other similar field sports. Keep the game flowing where possible. It’s a huge problem with rugby union at the top level IMO. That sport is supposed to flow quite freely, but the level of refereeing results in extremely frequent stoppages, which makes for very poor viewing. My experience has been that the game works much better at a lower level where refs let things flow more.
It does seem strange, but there’s some possible rationale behind it. If the rule is not currently being enforced, it could be because refs feel the level of the rule breaking is not proportionate with the level of the punishment. Decreasing the punishment, as well as increasing the severity of the rule breaking required to incur it might induce refs to be more inclined to enforce the punishment.
This is the only plausible explanation. The refs don’t want to turn the game on a keeper wasting a couple of seconds. That said, various timekeeping tasks especially, but Association football in general has always had a sort of impressionistic philosophy for officials, tasking them with keeping the game moving and more or less fair, but I don’t think that system has held up super well in the era of high tech and higher stakes, though I do fear they risk losing something magical about it. American football is the absolute inverse, with a dense and legalistic rulebook and false precision that comes of pretending that (among other impossible tasks) the officials really see where the point of a ball lands under a literal ton of human flesh. That said, there is not the same level of resistance to objective standards and enforcement and rule evolution that you can see on the soccer side.
It does seem strange, but there’s some possible rationale behind it. If the rule is not currently being enforced, it could be because refs feel the level of the rule breaking is not proportionate with the level of the punishment. Decreasing the punishment, as well as increasing the severity of the rule breaking required to incur it might induce refs to be more inclined to enforce the punishment.
We’ve seen something similar recently in another type of football. A few years ago, the NRL changed the punishment for minor ruck infringements and defensive offsides in their defensive half from a penalty—which requires the ref to stop the game entirely* and gives an immediate opportunity for a goal kick worth 2 points—to a reset of the tackle count. If that would have been the fifth tackle of their possession (and thus the next one is their last), a ruck infringement resets it to the first. It used to be the case that teams would get away unpunished with all but the most egregious of offences. Now it gets used quite a lot, because the minor offences are met with a comparatively minor punishment.
* as a side note, this should be a goal of all rules and enforcement in all football sports apart from maybe gridiron. And in other similar field sports. Keep the game flowing where possible. It’s a huge problem with rugby union at the top level IMO. That sport is supposed to flow quite freely, but the level of refereeing results in extremely frequent stoppages, which makes for very poor viewing. My experience has been that the game works much better at a lower level where refs let things flow more.
This is the only plausible explanation. The refs don’t want to turn the game on a keeper wasting a couple of seconds. That said, various timekeeping tasks especially, but Association football in general has always had a sort of impressionistic philosophy for officials, tasking them with keeping the game moving and more or less fair, but I don’t think that system has held up super well in the era of high tech and higher stakes, though I do fear they risk losing something magical about it. American football is the absolute inverse, with a dense and legalistic rulebook and false precision that comes of pretending that (among other impossible tasks) the officials really see where the point of a ball lands under a literal ton of human flesh. That said, there is not the same level of resistance to objective standards and enforcement and rule evolution that you can see on the soccer side.