Meh, the number of breakaway opportunities in which the foul occurs in the box is extremely small. It wouldn't change behavior much at all. Football wasn't always this way and doesn't need to be this way forever.Bosoxen said:
What you are proposing is in direct conflict with the spirit of the rule (sleepyjose and I both addressed that in our posts). The reason that "combo" is in place is to discourage players from engaging in that sort of behavior. Yes, the penalty is severe but that's the whole point. If you were to lessen the severity of the consequences of such an infraction, you would see the frequency of it drastically increase. I don't know about you, but I think anything that unduly hinders breakaway goal scoring opportunities is a bad thing for the game.
In any case, the rule is the rule and I think Pellegrini's postmatch bitching is fairly unjustified.