The game would benefit if FIFA eliminated throw in rules and just let players throw the ball in. IMO throw-ins slow down the game because a player must set his feet then must struggle to find a team-mate because the throw in mechanism limits how far he can throw the ball. Allowing players to throw the ball in however they liked (think basketball) would speed up the game and result in more open play and more goals because 1. A one handed throw can go much further which means teams could use it to launch quick counter attacks ==> This will create more goals. Remember USA's goal against Algeria at the recent world cup ? It came from a long throw by the goalkeeper. 2. A player could throw the ball into the six yard box from much further out ===> More goals 3. It will open up the game by enabling players to throw the ball to an open team-mate clear across the field unlike the current situation where they often struggle to find an open team-mate in crowded quarters. 3b. It will speed up the game because players will get the ball into play much faster. 4. This is supposed to be the simplest sport with the least amount of rules. In facts its popularity is due to its simplicity. Why not eliminate another set rules which serve no useful purpose other than tradition. 5. The sport cannot rest on its laurels and must continue to re-invent itself by tweaking rules to make it more exciting and draw more fans. It must try to compete in places like China, India, USA, Oz, Canada etc where it is still a niche sport.
I think it is how it is to put an appropriate restriction on the advantage you should get from the ball going out of play having touched your opponent last. Should it re-invent itself though? Does it need more attention? Football has become increasingly bloated with money over the last 15 years and more of it is not necessarily a good idea.
Preventing players from kicking the ball when the ball goes out of play is enough of a restriction. Football should not be afraid to re-invent itself to make itself more popular and no sport should rest on its laurels no matter how successful. You will get a lot more goals and a lot more exciting games if you make the game even simpler and speed it up. Right now FIFA should be strategizing ways of becoming more relevant in places like USA, China, India, Ozzie etc.
Why should it? So it can get more money, so top players can demand £300k/week instead of 150? Because that's all that will happen. More popular =/= better.
What is great about our game it went for generations with very few changes. That has changed in relatively recent history I am not sure that is a good thing. I don't think of a throw in as a chance to get an advantage. New coaches think of it as an advantage. I think of a throw in as just a restart that you want to just keep possession.
How about slam-dunks and home-runs too? More goals = more entertainment = more money. It's win-win for FIFA.
Even if FIFA does nothing, players will soon be demanding 300K per game very soon. I would say that will happen in 5 years. So there is no need to be jealous of players making all that money. FIFA should be looking to expand because no sport should rest on its laurels. In the United States, boxing and horse racing used to be among the biggest sports. Where are they now ? But mostly FIFA should be looking for ways to simplify the game further and make it more TV friendly.
Why do you think football is resting on its laurels? It's led by some of the greediest pig-headed suits imaginable, constantly scrambling for more millions. What it needs is to hold onto it's meaning and rich history, not trivialise itself for the casual s***munchers flicking over at home.
I say resting on its laurels because the powers that be are more concerned about stuffing their pockets than popularizing the sport. I cant remember that last time FIFA came up with an initiative that would benefit the sport at the grassroot levels or make it more TV friendly or enhance transparency. Most FAs across the world are corrupt because they take their lead from FIFA. Honestly I live in the US and would like to see soccer more often on TV, on radio and in discussions. Other US sports are always tinkering and making changes that benefit their sports.
I think you'll find that benefiting the sport and making it more TV friendly at the same time are pretty much polar opposites in most cases. As for FIFA not doing anything to make it more TV friendly... are you being serious? How many hair brained schemes have we heard being spouted in the last 10yrs under the guise of 'making the sport more attractive to the supporter' when, in reality, it's all about making it more palatable for TV audiences, especially in the US. Higher scoring matches are always one of the main bones of contention. So we get the make the goalposts bigger, sin bins for players so other teams have a numerical advantage during games to aid this and then we have the lovely, caring side of FIFA suggesting we include water breaks in Qatar for the players due to the extreme heat. (wasn't one of the main selling points for Qatar the fully air conditioned stadiums) which is fine for the actual matches but what about training on a daily basis during the competition. Didn't catch FIFA's ideas on that. Still, what a nice bunch of people they are. Water breaks. How thoughtful. Good for TV too though. Extra ad breaks. Lovely jubbly. http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2011/jul/07/world-cup-2022-three-thirds Making changes is all well and good if it is going to improve the core product. Unfortunately, those ideas are generally few and far between although I will admit to liking the invisible spray that will be used for positioning walls for set pieces. A small improvement but a worthwhile one I reckon.
I'm all for more transparency, less corruption and grassroots initiatives, but you're not going to find any of that amidst the hunt for tv money. Corruption, financial disparaty and diving are top of the reasonable person's to do list.
Just saying the water break idea they got from Brazil... We have water breaks at the 20 minute marks for the state championships which are usually played at the tail end of the summer (right now) and sometimes they have matches being played at 35+ Celsius (that's 95 for you guys), Vasco's last match it was 39c (102 F). So about 4 years ago after a death in the field, on a team which was a second division local team, the players made the state's FA pass a new rule which the match MUST be stopped at the 20 minute mark because of the heat. But Brazilian TV station still doesn't market that time off, not sure why! Because if it was in the US I could 100% see a budweiser commercial coming in on that time! Now Qatar usual temperatures in the time the games would be played are around 85-90 F, much cooler than current temperatures in Brazil. Yet they've been doing it every year for 100 years.. and people are bitching about a little bit of heat...
Unfortunately that's the ONLY thing FIFA/UEFA holding against in order to maintain their POWER in football = "we control the games the way we want YOU (fans) to watch" LOL. For throwing rule, I think it's not so bad ...as it has some positive sides: - fair game for teams that had no big tall and strong players (to throw that far at will) - some cheating in offside traps The obvious case is to introduce the 4th referee (on top of 3) in stead of 1 REF and 1 CAMARA (or 6, or 10)
You just inadvertently made my point which is : FIFA has rarely done anything worthwhile to make the game more TV friendly. It is high time they did. I am not asking for those hair brained ideas yopu posted up there. Its a no-brainer that water breaks do not make the game more attractive so I do not know why you mentioned it. Also I disagree with the idea that making a game TV friendly and benefiting the sport are polar opposites. When FIFA banned back passes to goalkeepers, it made the game more watchable and benefited the sport. Ditto when they modified the offside rule. There are numerous examples in other sports as well: Basketball introduced a shot clock and game became far more exciting.
I mentioned it because FIFA would be extremely interested in water breaks, not primarily to aid the footballers on the pitch, but to aid their already over inflated revenue streams with the possibility of added television advertising during each 'break'. It's relevant to the whole FIFA - TV friendly point you raised in your original post. Did it? In your opinion maybe but I wouldn't agree. I've watched plenty of matches before the back pass to the GK was outlawed that were full of entertainment and spectacle. Admittedly I've also watched games were teams tried to run down the clock by holding possession in and around their own penalty area. But does outlawing the back pass lead to a more watchable game of football...? Nowadays when defenders are closed down and have no out ball to the keeper to rebuild I often see a long 50-60 yd punt up the park either out of play or to no one in particular. If you think that is progress then fair enough but it doesn't automatically lead to a more entertaining standard of football for me. The amendment to the offside rule should, in theory, lead to a more attack minded (and therefore more entertaining for the casual fan) game of football. It should, but how often is it used in the correct manner by officials? More than 50% of the time? Less than? Whatever the exact percentage is I would hazard a guess as to - not often enough - being a pretty decent answer. If FIFA were really interested in improving the game shouldn't they be looking into why there is still so much confusion and not enough benefit of the doubt given to the attacker when supposed to be level with the last defender rule? Or is there no point because they can't make more money from it...? Sorry. We're talking FIFA and football so unless FIFA has a say in rules etc in some other sport I don't think the above has any relevance to this discussion.
I hope it's OK to broaden the topic a bit... One thing I've been wondering about for a long time is why soccer doesn't add two lines to the field analogous to the hockey blue lines, keep the midline as a third line, and get rid of the current offside rules. I know the hockey-type rules might seem a little baffling at first, but the main ideas are 1.) No passes that cross two lines, INCLUDING keeper punts and goal kicks. 2.) Once you are in the opponent's end with possession, you have to stay there and keep attacking e.g. can't kick it back 50 yards and reset 3.) (optional) You only get so much time to advance to the next zone, or if nothing else, at least give officials more of an objective way to enforce "progress" under any current anti-stalling rules This will reduce all sorts of problems with the current game, including - Stalling/"conservative" play - 80-yard keeper punts that suddenly put the team pressing the initiative at a big disadvantage - Long punts or kicks that end up being violently headed, which I suspect are the main causes of CTE and other brain damage that is now showing up in many soccer players - No more enforcement of the more bizarre aspects of offside rules, such as the fact that I can be offsides even if I'm standing just across midfield, or as an attacker even though there's 20 players within 5 yards of the goal, or because of an offside trap strategy, or because I'm suddenly one yard ahead of the action during a dynamic back-and-forth sequence. The idea is also relevant to OP's idea because if somebody figured out a 50-yard throw-in technique they still couldn't cross two lines with it so there wouldn't be a sudden crazy swing in initiative. Thoughts?
Some good thoughts there. My concern is that they make the game more complex. One of the reasons I support elimination of throw in rules is to simplify the game. The easiest way to simplify a game is to eliminate pointless rules like the throw in rules.
Before backpasses were forbidden, teams protecting a lead simply used to waste time by passing the ball back to the keeper constantly. It was exersparating. Banning backpasses is one of the best FIFA can walk and chew gum at the same time. No one is saying they should only focus on throw in rules. I am saying this is one of the areas they should look into. If they also want to look into simplifying the offiside rule then so be it. Citing examples from other sports has 100% relevance to this topic. There is absolutely no reason FIFA cannot learn from other sports.
But does it make it better?! I am not arguing against the time wasting element of the backpass before it was outlawed I'm asking if watching GK's hoof balls 50-60yds aimlessly up the park when closed down by an attacker improves the quality of football games. Does it...? Ok. You've lost me a little here. The paragraph you have highlighted from my comments is in relation to the offside rule amendment. I believe my question was shouldn't FIFA look to get the recently changed laws correct first before moving onto others...? I disagree. The sport you have selected as an example is totally different to football in as much as it has constant short, sharp interruptions.
Eliminating the back pass to the keeper was a good idea overall, but this does not mean everything must be changed. One of the primary attractions of soccer is its naturalness, where the beginner can easily pick it up on first viewing (the offside rule and the back pass to goalie being the only artifices to the game). For football to remain the sport it has become, the core of its popularity must not be changed. As a writer once described it, "a game simple enough for the enjoyment of the novice yet played with complexity for the enjoyment of the connoisseur".
Oh dear, why did I have to open this thread? What an awful idea! While this absurd idea certainly won't make the game any more popular, your conclusion is false. More popular => better. The more people playing the game, the more skilled players there will be. While this would make club football better overall, it would be most obvious at the int'l level. The reason the football World Cup is so much better than the basketball, hockey, rugby, etc. world cups is because it involves more regions of the world and more than 3-4 teams can win it! Although its already pretty good, there is still room for improvement (e.g. if the Asian countries get stronger). Especially in the regional tournaments. Right now the Euros and Copa America are pretty good, but the rest kind of suck.
You've sited two GK's out of how many hundreds? I would argue that the percentage would still be far higher of GK's having to punt the ball aimlessly up the park when closed down with an attacker. I watched Neuer himself do it on quite a few occasions against Man Utd at Old Trafford recently. Again I am not arguing against removing the back pass element of the game I am only questioning the so called 'improvement' that has encompassed the game since its removal. It isn't entirely convincing in my opinion.
In practice kicking the ball up the field is commonplace, but its becoming an outdated theory as a means to move the ball up the pitch. Just hasn't been executed yet. Think of how many times you hear people saying they hate when the keeper just boots the ball up the field. Either way I like the game better without the pass back rule.