Fifa Technical Director Van Basten has some ideas...

[Sidney1st]

Restrict players to 60 games a year.
Introduce Orange cards (must be a dutch thing) and sinbins.
Scrapping offside.

Claims that clubs have to think about football and not so much the money
Some interesting comments from him though -
“We should not just let the game be organised by those with the money,” he said from Fifa HQ in Zurich. “The big clubs like Paris Saint-Germain, Manchester City and Real Madrid who have everything. In football you need opponents, competition because if you are alone with two or three clubs controlling everything you don't have any competition.”

“We are trying to help the game, to let the game develop in a good way,” Van Basten added. “We want to have a game which is honest, which is dynamic, a nice spectacle so we should try to do everything to help that process.”


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[bfccrazy]

If offsides are scrapped, Gray will be worth an easy 50mil.

I'm all for it!

[martin_p]

If offsides are scrapped, Gray will be worth an easy 50mil.

I'm all for it!

I think strikers with pace will be a lot less valuable than they are now. If offsides are scrapped the defenders won't stray away from the edge of their boxes that much and the game will come very stretched. It'll probably mean less goals rather than more as the days of the ball over the top for the pacey striker to run on to will be over.

His other ideas are rubbish as well. A 60 game cap would be unworkable (especially in years with big international tournaments) and sin bins pointless.

[ClaretTony]

As much as players getting caught offside is frustrating, I think it would be a bad decision to scrap it. As martin_p says, defenders will sit deeper and the game will stretch.

[Dyched]

No offside to stop teams parking the bus? So say on sunday arsenal leave sanchez, giroud and ozil up top. Our defence will just leave them there alone. Ok.

[Darthlaw]

He's clearly nuts. I mean Man City, a big club?

[duncandisorderly]

The offside law is probably the most important law in the game. Streamline it or something by all means, but it needs keeping.

Sin bins and orange cards are also bad ideas and would be entirely unnecessary if referees could do their jobs a bit better and more consistently.

60 games a year - meh. Would unlikely affect over 80 of the 92 anyway. I don't know how viable a competition the Sherpa Van Paint Trade Cup is or whatever it's called, but scrapping that would reduce the number of games needed in the bottom two divisions, although I doubt Van Bastens ideas are designed with the dregs of the food chain in mind.

[Pstotto]

I doubt scrapping offside would improve the football, as things stand. maybe if they introduced another line across each half and extended the zonal play that far, it might work better.

[NRC]

hmmm..... it suits our hoofball. It suits smaller, more mobile CF players (like Gray), and it suits footballing CH like Keane, and warriors who throw their bodies on the line to put in blocks like Mee. It suits midfielders like Hendrick that can ghost past players, but in the main those with vision and an accurate pass, like Defour.

But it does suggest more goals would be scored as a result of a more open game - perhaps that's the driver for the growing WW audiences in North America and China

[dsr]

Why don't they get the clubs involved in trying these things out? try and persuade every club in the world to play one friendly each year (a pre-season friendly will do) with an experimental rule. Eg. no offside, larger goals, 10 a side, anything they fancy might make a difference. Even in friendlies, we will get a fair idea of what the "new game" might look like.

[elwaclaret]

Why don't they just start a new sport.
4 Quarters - to help coaching..... nothing to do with advertising revenue then.
No offsides.... back to tar liners and humping the ball forward as fast s possible

[Clarettintedlense]

Why dont they just leave the game alone?

The sliding tackle is no more
The new kick off rule has done nothing to improve the game
The offiside rule is more confusing than ever


The games fine. Or was fine. But each change is for the worse. The only positive change of the last 20 or so years was the backpass rule.

Great players of yester year are no more. Like kevin ball for us. But the likes of keane, possibly vieira etc would be nowhere near as efective in the modern era and thats for the worse. A good, firm but fair tackle is as good as any skill. And it made the skilful players stand out even more. Anyway rant over.

[Longside4evr]

Wouldn't work it's just dandy has it is still getting used to the ball being played forward from kickoff
And just for the record the golden goal rule that was introduced we scored the first of them in a cup tie and I think it took the players a while to realize they just won very bazaar

[martin_p]

Wouldn't work it's just dandy has it is still getting used to the ball being played forward from kickoff
And just for the record the golden goal rule that was introduced we scored the first of them in a cup tie and I think it took the players a while to realize they just won very bazaar

The golden goal rule is a classic example of a bright idea that was going to be fairer and make extra time exciting that was counter productive. Rather than going for the golden goal, teams just battened down the hatches, scared to lose as goal as it signalled the end of the game. As a result you got more penalty shoot outs which was exactly what the rule was brought in to avoid. Scrapping the offside rule would be the same, Rather than resulting in more goals it would result in ultra-cautious defending, with defenders camped in the penalty area, resulting in less goals. Midfield would be dead, there'd be very little point to it with most players in one or the other penalty area.

[Woodleyclaret]

Is this insanity a result of heading heavy football's?

[bob-the-scutter]

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[Wile E Coyote]

offside needn't be scrapped, but it should be simplified. It is far too messy as it stands.
Bad enough that the officials have to make split second decisions about when the ball was played without all the additional claptrap .

[duncandisorderly]

Offside at top level football could easily be taken out of the hands of the officials now anyway with the amount of cameras at every game.

I'd be against it, mind. I like the human factor of officials ballsing things up.

[Wile E Coyote]

me too, but the goal line cameras seem a good idea. i was against technology , but nowadays I think its beneficial.
Far too many areas of the game where refs are being vilified wrongly.

[Dyched]

How about an extra ball in play? That'd be entertaining.

[Wile E Coyote]

i notice van basten never said anything about more stray dogs on the pitch, surely an oversight on his part.

[wilks_bfc]

If he wants to change the offside rule then how about we just say if you are ahead of the last defender then you are offside.

None of this 1st/2nd phase crap

[Garnerssoap]

I was an expert tart liner at school. I might just make it as a pro yet

[Jeffbfc]

Off side rule.
A forward is not off side if not interfering with play

A defender (a left or right back) when the ball in play on the opposite side is playing ever body on.
How is that right.
Off side is off side.

[Saxoman]

'Scrapping offside'.. Bloody hell, Jordan Rhodes would be even more of a tartliner than he already is..

[Saxoman]

Leave the game alone ffs. Pass back rule is bad enough, fcked Liverpool fc royally..

[Falcon]

The 60 games per year argument seems particularly ill thought out.

A 21 year old goalkeeper and a 36 year old midfielder are going to have massively different amount of games they could feasibly play in one season.

[DCWat]

Why dont they just leave the game alone?

The sliding tackle is no more
The new kick off rule has done nothing to improve the game
The offiside rule is more confusing than ever


The games fine. Or was fine. But each change is for the worse. The only positive change of the last 20 or so years was the backpass rule.

Great players of yester year are no more. Like kevin ball for us. But the likes of keane, possibly vieira etc would be nowhere near as efective in the modern era and thats for the worse. A good, firm but fair tackle is as good as any skill. And it made the skilful players stand out even more. Anyway rant over.

The sliding tackle isn't no more particularly but it is less used than it used to be. It's more tackler no from behind or the ludicrous two footed lunges that are a no, no.

I can't argue that the effectiveness of someone like Keane would be diluted though, and that's a bad thing. The game has got too soft.

Offside, the use of or avoidance of, is a skill of both the defending and attacking teams. A well drilled defence playing offside well and effectively is great to see albeit frustrating for the opposition and their fans.

[Clarettintedlense]

The sliding tackle isn't no more particularly but it is less used than it used to be. It's more tackler no from behind or the ludicrous two footed lunges that are a no, no.

I can't argue that the effectiveness of someone like Keane would be diluted though, and that's a bad thing. The game has got too soft.

Offside, the use of or avoidance of, is a skill of both the defending and attacking teams. A well drilled defence playing offside well and effectively is great to see albeit frustrating for the opposition and their fans.

Agree. The games soft. Watch some of the tackles and challenges from yester year and everyone - fans, pundits and even ex players would be crying for a red for what was then a fair tackle. The games gone ridiculously soft.

The diving and play acting on saturday from southampton is as bad as ive seen. Dont understand how refs still fall for it.

Keane 99 percent of the time was a very hard but very fair player (Haaland excepted). That player is long gone and the games worse for it. Even a shoulder barge is a foul now.

[Saxoman]

The back pass rule was a joke. Liverpool used to kill games passing round the back 4 and keeper, it ruined everything!