Soccer, AKA association football, AKA “legsweep” in Serbo-Croatian, is a fine sport as-is. It’s not a terrible sport, but it’s far from the best. If you don’t believe me, just look how popular it is around the world. Just like how James Cameron’s Avatar only made billions because of its hackneyed plot and pretty colors (or so I’ve been told from the intellectuals here at INTBiQ who know cinema), soccer must only have billions of fans because it is so bland and accessible, not because it is great.
If we want to Make Soccer Great for Once, I think the place to start is with the rules of the game. However, it is common knowledge that sports change through organic, common-law, trial-and-error rulemaking rather than through the imposition of rules created out of whole cloth. Therefore, it would be a mistake to start creating new rules for soccer from scratch. So instead I am going to suggest some rule changes that have already been vetted by other sports, only making slight alterations to fit soccer where necessary. Here are ten such rules, starting with the most readily implementable and proceeding to the more drastic.
1. Line-out (Rugby Union)
Perhaps because soccer focuses so much on the feet and kicking, the hands and throwing aspects of the game have gone under-scrutinized. But let me tell you, there’s a lot of room for improvement in soccer’s throwing game. Currently, when a ball goes out-of-bounds (or “in to touch” as real legsweep fans like to say), a player on the team who didn’t touch the ball last gets to throw the ball in with his hands. In practice, the only restriction for the throw-in is that the throwing player stands vaguely in the same area. This makes it easier for the throwing player to get the ball to his teammates, resulting in virtually no turnovers meaning that nothing exciting happens when the ball is kicked out-of-bounds anywhere but deep in an opposing team’s end.
I don’t know about you, but I trust rugby more than soccer when it comes to having good rules on tossing balls. In rugby, out-of-bound balls are solved with a line-out: the inbounding player must throw the ball perpendicular to where it’s out of bounds (Law 18.22.A) and players from both teams jump up on each other trying to grab the ball in the middle. For soccer, this would involve doing the same process, except the players still can’t use their hands to catch the ball. Incorporating this throw-catch mechanic into soccer is literally a no-brainer due to the number of concussions it will cause from players trying to head a ball or bicycle kick it to a teammate. For too long soccer players like Taylor Twellman have only been able to report on concussions in other sports with envy; now soccer players can develop degenerative brain disorders like real athletes.
2. Eight Second Count (Boxing)
On the topic of injuries, the number one complaint about soccer among American viewers is the high frequency of flopping. At the last FIFA World Cup, the average game saw over 4 minutes of flopping. The ideal penalty for this is death, but FIFA is prevented from instituting this because it operates in countries that respect human rights like Russia and Qatar. The next best solution then is to penalize the player by removing him from the game. To this end, every player that falls to the ground and stays down for more than 8 seconds is deemed incapable of continuing to play. This is a humane solution for both the truly injured player and the poor viewer who doesn’t want to see players graphically hip-thrust the sky while yelling at the top of their lungs. It’s time to say “No Mas” to Neymar.
3. Designated Hitter (Baseball)
If flopping is the number one complaint Americans have about soccer (a statistic I completely made up as you could have figured out from the lack of hyperlink), then the number two complaint has to be low scoring. But luckily for soccer, we’ve figured out how to increase scoring before: give each team a designated hitter. The designated hitter is a player who doesn’t have to play positions on defense or run around; the DH’s only job is to hit dingers. In soccer, this would mean that each team would have a player responsible for corner kicks and free kicks (with the caveat that the DH would have to jog all the way off the pitch before allowing a position player back in). Besides boosting offense, one benefit of the DH in baseball is that it reduces the rate of injuries for star players, which will be necessary after instituting Suggestion #1, and it allows players like David Ortiz to extend their careers long after they can’t play a position. Unfortunately, given the amount of passionate soccer fans in the Dominican Republic and their known tendencies to attack designated hitters, there will probably be a little too many DHs DOA in the DR.
4. Point After Try (American Football)
For the next idea on how to boost scoring, we turn from America’s pastime to America’s nowtime. In American football, the preferred way to increase scoring is simply to give the team that scores another chance to score a point immediately after. (While football is billed as human chess, the simplicity of this solution is more akin to human tic-tac-toe). In soccer, every team that scores a goal should get a free kick from 33 yards/meter out to score another one. While increasing the scoring rate, this will also keep games interesting in the late minutes as now two goals can be scored in the blink of an eye. This would shore up the well-known fact in soccer that 2-0 is the most dangerous lead, unless you pronounce it Dos a Cero.
5. Goal Posts at the Front of the Box (Canadian Football)
Contrary to popular belief, Canada has its own identity separate from the United States that has contributed many things to the sporting world like lax bros, peach basket basketball, and maple syrup chugging. In football, Canada is unique in maintaining goal posts in the field of play by the front of the endzone. The world could learn a thing from Canada. If soccer moved the goalposts up, the strategy around the goal would become much more nuanced and reward tactical play from set pieces that “bend it like Beckham” and offensive players that can create space around a defender who is now permitted to guard the literal side and front of the net. Also players run into the goalposts and fall down sometimes.
6. Footfault (Tennis)
My previous suggestions have clearly been aimed at increasing offense. To help out the defense for once, I suggest turning to the rules of tennis. During service in tennis, the serving player cannot touch the boundary with his foot without committing a footfault. In soccer, no goals should count where the striker’s plant foot was touching any white line. This way offensive players won’t be rewarded by firing at will any place on the field like a madman; goals will only count when the player was good and tactical enough to create green space under his feet. A helpful pneumonic for the players to remember this rule is “green means go [for it here]”, and “white means flight [out of urban areas in response to mass migration spawned by the fall of the Jim Crow south].”
Obviously, the judgment of whether a player’s foot was on a line will be subject to VAR which will provide for more of that reviewing time that everyone loves. The real question I have yet to resolve is whether scoring a goal while touching a boundary is enough to constitute a yellow card. Because tennis punishes a player for committing two footfaults in a row (“a double fault”) I think a soccer player should be awarded a yellow card for a footfault strike (and thus an automatic red for doing it twice in a row) but can have that yellow card taken back after the next legal goal (essentially like serving the next point in tennis). This way all forms of excess aggression earn a yellow card: physical aggression toward other players and aggression in scoring illegal goals. The fact that soccer currently discriminates against these two forms of “aggression” is inexplicable, but now remediable.
7. Too Many Men Penalty (Ice Hockey)
This rule too is meant to reduce offense in soccer: the offensive institution of gender inequality, that is. As we see the United States Women’s National Team sue the United States Soccer Federation for gender discrimination during the FIFA Women’s World Cup, we are all reminded that for too long women in soccer have dealt with the completely unjustifiable idea that they are not equal to men’s soccer players. To remedy this, soccer needs to institute a “too many men” penalty: For every male player on the team without a corresponding female player, the offending team must play without one male player for at least two minutes, served at any time. As an example, an all-male team could choose to have no one on the pitch for two minutes, or, play with 10 players for 22 minutes, or any combination in between. This will incentivize teams to allow women to showcase their skills while playing men in a way that benefits both the women and the viewers at home.
8. Carts for Travel to the Ball (Golf)
The average professional soccer players runs for 7 miles a match, or roughly a google-able number of kilometers. That amount of running takes a toll on the body, leading to exhaustion and poorer play in the later minutes. To preserve fresh legs and improve the quality of play, players should have the opportunity to travel to the ball using a cart. The Supreme Court of the United States in PGA Tour, Inc. v. Martin firmly established the precedent that walking is not a fundamental aspect of golf. One could easily concluded that this is also the case for soccer, as long as the players still only use their body to strike the ball instead of turning soccer into a lame version of Rocket League. Of course, Suggestion #7’s effect of putting more women drivers on the field would result in a rise of cart crashes on the pitch. But that is a cost I’m will to pay to secure gender equality because I’m not a misogynist.
9. Players Parachute to Starting Positions (Fortnite)
No one outside of pedantic pugilistic paramours care about the result of Bowe v. Hollyfield II, but everyone cared when Fan Man came flying in to break up the fight. Outside of boxing, other sports even allows performers to parachute into the half-time show and it’s undeniably awesome. (See, for example, 3 minutes into the Super Bowl XXIX halftime show showcasing “Indiana Jones and the Temple of the Forbidden Eye”). Taking it further like Fortnite,the start of every soccer half should expand on these innovations by having the players parachute into the stadium.
This would have multiple benefits. First, every soccer pre-show and half-time-show would become must-watch TV as viewers would need to make sure that their star athlete made it on the field in one piece. Even non-gamblers might find a reason to check the weather report for that day hoping for clear skies. Second, this would spur innovation in stadium design. As part of home-field advantage, players become use to the quirks of their own stadium and would probably become adept at landing at their own field. The goal would thus be to make the stadium as challenging to land in as possible for visiting teams while the home team can is able to land routinely. Goodbye, inviting vagina-shaped stadia of Qatar. Hello, cliffside venues like Gospin dolac and Estadio Municipal de Braga. By parachuting players, soccer would be providing budding architects a way to help their team on the pitch with their work above the pitch.
10. Eliminate Goaltending (Basketball)
The answer to soccer’s problems it turns out were staring us in the face this whole time. This week, washed-up Welsh wannabe Wayne Rooney scored a goal from beyond midfield when he caught the goalie outside of his box. Granted, Wayne Rooney is playing against inferior competition in his retirement league of MLS. But that should make us wonder how great the game could be when the best soccer players in the world aren’t dragged down by the rule allowing goaltending. I’d much rather have a world where Steph Curry can sink half court shots routinely instead of a world where Manute Bol can stand at the rim and swat everything down. Lionel Messi should be allowed to do the same thing in soccer. Plus, by allowing goalies—who are taller than average and take away points from people like Messi—to play soccer is basically engaging in height discrimination which is basically engaging in the discrimination against women—something that the USWNT will not stand for. But hey, the ball’s in soccer’s court now.
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