Taken from a Sky Sport article, currently available online. I would be interested to hear people's opinions on this.
"Marco van Basten wants rid of the offside rule. Perhaps you have heard that before when it made headlines around the world and assumed it to be some flight of fancy. Think again. The Dutch legend still believes football should follow hockey and scrap offsides.
"I am still very curious about the offside rule because I am convinced that it is not a good rule," Van Basten tells Sky Sports. "At least I would like to trial it to show that football is also possible without the offside rule. I am convinced that football would be better without it"
Personally, I am convinced that football needs to change to attract a new era of fans. Sure, it will always have the old stalwarts and that generally means the people reading this post. However, does football really appeal to younger fans nowadays? The competition is increasingly hot, not just from other sports but from technological advances in other areas such as video gaming, social media and the availability of content on streaming services such a Netflix and Amazon Prime.
I often consider, would I get into football today, as it is now, if I had no prior knowledge or affiliation with the sport...and the answer to that is that I might play it but I probably wouldn't watch it. In fact, I watch fewer and fewer matches now anyway and mainly only really watch United and England games. Let's be honest, the vast majority of matches are either irrelevant, played out between teams who have no hope of actually winning anything or very drab, tactical cagey affairs.
Fundamentally, I believe that this boils down to it being too easy to defend. In cricket, pundits often talk about the balance between 'bat and ball' and the importance of making it an even contest for the good of the sport. I feel that currently, it's too easy for teams to sit deep, pack the defence, pack the midfield and keep it tight. I remember reading an interview with Sam Allardyce even 10yrs ago, in which he stated he could play 4-5-1 in training and easily play out an entire XI vs XI game without the 'attacking' side creating a real chance on goal.
There was a time when teams had to really work to grind out a 0-0 or a 0-1 victory. I can remember games back in the 90s with heroic goalkeeping performances or amazing defensive performance, as well as healthy doses of luck and poor finishing aiding the defending team. Nowadays, it doesn't take anything particularly special. It just feels like average teams can turn-up, park the bus and without doing anything special, make it virtually impossible for the opponent to score. Add in to the mix the number of goals which result from set-pieces and it's too easy for sides to base their entire game-plan around sitting deep and trying to nick one at a set-piece. That's not good enough. That's not a spectacle for viewers. Who really want's to see a team defend with 10 and their opponents just moving the ball side-to-side-to-side-to-side for 90 minutes trying to eventually drag someone out of position or force a mistake? Just to repeat, I have no issues with teams turning up to defend, but if they do it should be HARD. It should be very difficult to pull off.
Now, if you consider how football can change to try and move the powershift between defenders and attackers, I believe there are a number of 'quick wins' that ought to be implemented ASAP. I think these could easily be implemented without too much fuss. These include -;
1) Stopping the clock when the ball goes out of play to stop time-wasting
2) Making the goals in professional (league) football two feet wider and two feet taller to account for the fact that the average GK has increased in size from 5ft 11" to 6ft 3" over the last 20 years
3) Issuing 'Green' Sin Bin cards to players who commit tactical fouls. This would cover those circumstances were a player chops a player down who is breaking into a dangerous position. These situations warrant more than a Yellow card, which is no real punishment considering only a tiny percentage of footballers pick up two yellows in a game. If teams knew they would lose a player for 15 minutes, these tactical fouls would stop.
I would like to see all of the above changes made, however, the subject of removing offsides is one that I am completely unsure about. On the one hand, I can see why we might want to remove offsides. Currently, teams are squeezing right up the pitch and matches are becoming condensed into 50 yard areas of pitches that are 100 yards+
On the other hand, I feel if you removed offsides completely, it would be difficult to stop players just goal-hanging. In football, unlike hockey who removed offsides from their game, it doesn't require much skill to just hit a long ball over the top. I could see managers like Allardyce and Dyche totally ruining the game if we did away with offsides altogether. We'd have Peter Crouch and Nikola Zigic out of retirement and marking the GK with 8 players behind them lumping it forward to try and get some kind of flick-on into the goal...which would be awful.
Therefore, my feeling on this is how about a compromise? How about keep offsides but change the rule to say that players can be offside ONLY if they are beyond the 18yard line? In the modern era of VAR, this would be fairly easily to police and even without VAR, it's only the same as having the offside line drawn on the halfway line.
This way, my hope is that you would do away with the goal-hanging because forwards couldn't stand in the box and mark the GK, however, defensive lines would probably have to drop 20 yards and this would massively open up the pitch and create more space for creative players. Running with the ball, dribbling and long passing would all suddenly come back into the game. Teams might still be able to try and put low-blocks in-place but I don't feel this would be a particularly viable tactic if attacking teams only had to worry about offsides from the 18yard line. If teams did try and defend all game, you could just position attackers right on the 'edge' of offside and eventually you'd work the ball through to them and create chances.
How do people feel about this? Does football need to change? Is the balance between attack and defence out? Is football in it's current guise an exciting product? What are the potential problems? What are the viable alternatives?
"Marco van Basten wants rid of the offside rule. Perhaps you have heard that before when it made headlines around the world and assumed it to be some flight of fancy. Think again. The Dutch legend still believes football should follow hockey and scrap offsides.
"I am still very curious about the offside rule because I am convinced that it is not a good rule," Van Basten tells Sky Sports. "At least I would like to trial it to show that football is also possible without the offside rule. I am convinced that football would be better without it"
Personally, I am convinced that football needs to change to attract a new era of fans. Sure, it will always have the old stalwarts and that generally means the people reading this post. However, does football really appeal to younger fans nowadays? The competition is increasingly hot, not just from other sports but from technological advances in other areas such as video gaming, social media and the availability of content on streaming services such a Netflix and Amazon Prime.
I often consider, would I get into football today, as it is now, if I had no prior knowledge or affiliation with the sport...and the answer to that is that I might play it but I probably wouldn't watch it. In fact, I watch fewer and fewer matches now anyway and mainly only really watch United and England games. Let's be honest, the vast majority of matches are either irrelevant, played out between teams who have no hope of actually winning anything or very drab, tactical cagey affairs.
Fundamentally, I believe that this boils down to it being too easy to defend. In cricket, pundits often talk about the balance between 'bat and ball' and the importance of making it an even contest for the good of the sport. I feel that currently, it's too easy for teams to sit deep, pack the defence, pack the midfield and keep it tight. I remember reading an interview with Sam Allardyce even 10yrs ago, in which he stated he could play 4-5-1 in training and easily play out an entire XI vs XI game without the 'attacking' side creating a real chance on goal.
There was a time when teams had to really work to grind out a 0-0 or a 0-1 victory. I can remember games back in the 90s with heroic goalkeeping performances or amazing defensive performance, as well as healthy doses of luck and poor finishing aiding the defending team. Nowadays, it doesn't take anything particularly special. It just feels like average teams can turn-up, park the bus and without doing anything special, make it virtually impossible for the opponent to score. Add in to the mix the number of goals which result from set-pieces and it's too easy for sides to base their entire game-plan around sitting deep and trying to nick one at a set-piece. That's not good enough. That's not a spectacle for viewers. Who really want's to see a team defend with 10 and their opponents just moving the ball side-to-side-to-side-to-side for 90 minutes trying to eventually drag someone out of position or force a mistake? Just to repeat, I have no issues with teams turning up to defend, but if they do it should be HARD. It should be very difficult to pull off.
Now, if you consider how football can change to try and move the powershift between defenders and attackers, I believe there are a number of 'quick wins' that ought to be implemented ASAP. I think these could easily be implemented without too much fuss. These include -;
1) Stopping the clock when the ball goes out of play to stop time-wasting
2) Making the goals in professional (league) football two feet wider and two feet taller to account for the fact that the average GK has increased in size from 5ft 11" to 6ft 3" over the last 20 years
3) Issuing 'Green' Sin Bin cards to players who commit tactical fouls. This would cover those circumstances were a player chops a player down who is breaking into a dangerous position. These situations warrant more than a Yellow card, which is no real punishment considering only a tiny percentage of footballers pick up two yellows in a game. If teams knew they would lose a player for 15 minutes, these tactical fouls would stop.
I would like to see all of the above changes made, however, the subject of removing offsides is one that I am completely unsure about. On the one hand, I can see why we might want to remove offsides. Currently, teams are squeezing right up the pitch and matches are becoming condensed into 50 yard areas of pitches that are 100 yards+
On the other hand, I feel if you removed offsides completely, it would be difficult to stop players just goal-hanging. In football, unlike hockey who removed offsides from their game, it doesn't require much skill to just hit a long ball over the top. I could see managers like Allardyce and Dyche totally ruining the game if we did away with offsides altogether. We'd have Peter Crouch and Nikola Zigic out of retirement and marking the GK with 8 players behind them lumping it forward to try and get some kind of flick-on into the goal...which would be awful.
Therefore, my feeling on this is how about a compromise? How about keep offsides but change the rule to say that players can be offside ONLY if they are beyond the 18yard line? In the modern era of VAR, this would be fairly easily to police and even without VAR, it's only the same as having the offside line drawn on the halfway line.
This way, my hope is that you would do away with the goal-hanging because forwards couldn't stand in the box and mark the GK, however, defensive lines would probably have to drop 20 yards and this would massively open up the pitch and create more space for creative players. Running with the ball, dribbling and long passing would all suddenly come back into the game. Teams might still be able to try and put low-blocks in-place but I don't feel this would be a particularly viable tactic if attacking teams only had to worry about offsides from the 18yard line. If teams did try and defend all game, you could just position attackers right on the 'edge' of offside and eventually you'd work the ball through to them and create chances.
How do people feel about this? Does football need to change? Is the balance between attack and defence out? Is football in it's current guise an exciting product? What are the potential problems? What are the viable alternatives?
