The International Football Association Board (IFAB) secretary Lukas Brud charts football's simplicity as the reason for its success around the world, however, he is under no illusions that the game needs to keep evolving, insisting football's lawmaker's will continue to look for ways to improve and develop football for the better.

Founded in 1886, IFAB is the worldwide body with sole responsibility for developing and preserving the laws of the game, with the goal to improve and develop the game for players, match officials and fans, while protecting and strengthening the spirit and simplicity of football.

Speaking exclusively to Sky Sports as part of our Future of Football series, Brud explains what is on the agenda for IFAB as it looks to keep football moving forward.

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"One of the main topics we are looking into at the moment is improved participant behaviour on and around the field of play," he said. "We want to find a way to improve the behaviour of all participants because of the retention of referees, and motivating referees to participate in the game and become referees is decreasing.

"We need to find a way of making sure there are enough referees, that they are being respected and that they can work properly on the field of play."

"Another area is technology," Brud added. "As we have seen over the last decade or so with goal-line technology, VAR and semi-automated offside technology, I'm sure we will see more of that coming into the game when it comes to improving fairness in particular.

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"The third area we are looking at is the health of players. The concussion substitutes trial that we are currently running in England, and USA are in addition running a trial where heading is banned for U12s and younger levels.

"We are looking into ways of improving the management of injuries and non-visible injuries such as concussion through the laws of the game. We are not medical people, however, we have to protect medical staff and especially the players so that they are treated properly and being assessed properly to deal with that."

IFAB keen to tackle player behaviour

Player behaviour was a theme throughout last season with 15 of the 20 Premier League clubs fined at least once for failing to control their players.

There were also the high-profile cases of Liverpool boss Jurgen Klopp's clash with referee Paul Tierney in his side's dramatic 4-3 over Tottenham at the end of April, while Aleksandar Mitrovic was handed an eight-game ban after pushing referee Chris Kavanagh in Fulham's FA Cup quarter-final defeat at Manchester United in March.

In 2019, the FA announced that temporary dismissals, also known as sin-bins, would be introduced across all levels of grassroots football from the start of the 2019-20 season as further punishment for dissent made by players towards the referee. Could this be something we see at the top level of the game?

"There are a number of ideas on the table in relation to player behaviour," Brud said. "The sin-bin is certainly one of them.

"We are going to create a working group at IFAB, with different stakeholders in the game, to see what kind of ideas could be introduced into the game or trialled at least.

"The temporary dismissal is certainly one of them because it is already being applied at some lower levels of the game. But whether it might be trialled at the top level of the game or not, this is something we will be discussing over the next couple of years."

World Cup approach to time-wasting?

Time-wasting was also a very hot topic in the Premier League last season, especially after FIFA's crackdown at the World Cup in Qatar.

The average ball-in-play time in the Premier League last season was 54 minutes and 46 seconds, which is the lowest it has ever been in the 11 seasons since records began in the 2012/13 season. It is 22 seconds fewer than the season before and one minute and 57 seconds lower than the peak of 56 minutes and 43 seconds back in 2013/14.

Additional substitutions and VAR have contributed to this, but is the current average of eight minutes of stoppage time per Premier League game - which is also at an all-time high - enough? The examples seen at the World Cup suggest not, but sufficient additional time is seen as the way to tackle this problem rather than the more radical stop-the-clock option or a 60-minute match.

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Brud said: "We have already looked into a number of things from around 2017 and 2018. We want to achieve one thing and that is making sure that the amount of time is distributed fairly for both teams so that they both have exactly the same amount of time.

"Of course, there are ideas from making sure there is sufficient additional time added at the end of the match like we have seen at the last two World Cups or the very radical stopping the clock every time the ball is out of play.

"For the time being, at least, we have come to the conclusion that it makes more sense to really look into what time was lost and add it to the end of the game.

"Although it might be unusual for the viewers to see a lot of added time, what we have seen in the last two World Cups is it is actually the best solution because it doesn't require a law change. It does tick all the boxes. All the things we want to achieve, it does solve the issue and, for the time being, this will remain the main idea going forward."

The battle to stay consistent

One of the key challenges in football, especially around officiating and interpreting the laws of the game, is consistency.

Taking the example of time-wasting, Brud explained: "It's always a challenge to have a consistent interpretation of the laws around the world of football.

"When we talked about this at our last AGM, FIFA, as a representative of the football world, was very committed in encouraging all associations, confederations and competitions to follow the same principles.

"It is only a recommendation of course. The law doesn't specify that you have to add one minute for this or two minutes for that but, of course, the laws already allow it. But the ultimate goal is to have the fair amount of time added at the end of the game, which basically avoids encouraging players from wasting time or for tactical breaks.

"However, we do also need to understand that sometimes players do need time to recover and sometimes a longer execution of the free-kick or a corner-kick, they just need to recover during that period.

"We cannot be too intrusive in the game in this regard."

'We never dismiss an idea'

As part of the Future of Football series, Sky Sports recently put together a football match featuring a host of new rules, including player sin-bins, bigger goals, power plays where a team could take off an opposition player of their choosing for a certain period of time in the match, and goals counting for double from outside the box.

We put the game to Brud, who was impressed with some of the innovations implemented, and he revealed that all ideas put to IFAB are taken seriously and explored, however wacky they might be.

He said: "We do receive ideas and we thoroughly review things that are put to us.

"A good example was the different order of penalty kicks where we changed from AB to ABBA format. There was an assumption that it might improve the fairness of penalties, but it created so much confusion. In the end, we said it was nice to trial it, but we are not considering it going forward.

"There are other areas where we have thought we should explore things further and trial it to see if there really is a way because we need to tackle a problem. The order of penalty kicks may not have been the major problem but where there is a problem, where we see there is a challenge to face in order to improve the game, whether that is the fairness, the attractiveness or health of players, we have to look into it.

"We never dismiss an idea immediately. We always check it against what is already in the laws of the game and whether the laws of the game could potentially be improved in this area or whether there is a certain interpretation that can be applied or whether a certain addition of what is in the laws can be brought in, in order to embrace that idea as well."

'We need to keep looking at improvements'

It is clear IFAB is open to new ideas and implementing them if they are right for the game.

It is also open to new formats of the game if there is a change that football feels it needs going forward, but, despite that, the goal largely remains the same as it bids to keep football the successful game it is today and in the past.

When asked about the future of football, and in particular where the laws of the game could go, Brud said: "We need to monitor it closely.

"We should not be closing our eyes and believing that the success of the game will remain as it is. We have to monitor and see if there are ways of improving fairness, health and attractiveness of the game in order to avoid people turning away from the game.

"This is something that IFAB are looking at very closely across the globe. Of course, we are not monitoring every single game but we see developments that we are trying to tackle and when it comes to the future of the game, the simplicity of football is its success.

"We have to keep the game simple but where we need to look into improving fairness, and VAR is a good example. But eventually, we have to keep the game of football as it is as much as possible, but if there are ways of improving it, or if different formats are needed in the future to keep it successful and interesting, then I'm certain that football, and we are servants of football, will want something different.

"We as IFAB, together with FIFA, the British associations and all the other stakeholders around the world, we will make sure we find solutions for that."