It’s incredibly frustrating, isn’t it? After all these years of tinkering and ideas, and the quality of umpiring continues to make Big Pharma richer and richer through increased blood pressure prescriptions as a result of it. Stepping back and looking at it, there’s one thing in particular that doesn’t get enough attention IMO:
Umpires miss a majority of all infringements that are there.
My hunch is they miss at least 80% of all free kicks. And when a majority of infringements are regularly missed, players tend to cheat the rules more often.
Maybe we have to stop targeting the umpires and start targeting the players. Carefully review each game and consider severe penalties to players who are seen to manipulate the rules in any way. Stamp out all cheating. Penalise dishonest players over umpires in which it’s not humanly possible to do a better job.
The game is simply too fast, chaotic, and dense to umpire accurately in real-time, so I‘m starting to accept the fact that umpires can’t do a better job (for now). At the very least, the current solution of focusing on the umpires by giving them new rules every week certainly isn’t working.