The game of football seems to get a new tweak every week – sometimes it feels like they’re taking our game away from us.
Now that football is the hottest sport in the world, we’re seeing more ideas for change. We’ve highlighted ten ideas here. Some look good, a few feel dodgy, and some feel bad already. Let us know what you think!
Premier League v La Liga
This idea comes from Victor Orta, Sevilla’s Director of Football.
“What’s better? Premier League or La Liga? How about a Ryder Cup of football to find out? In the summer, play the champions of the Premier League against the champions of La Liga, second against second, third against third … promoted teams against promoted teams. Maybe go to the US, play there. Three points for a win, two for a win on penalties, one for a loss.”
My View?
This idea would create interesting matches for fans of clubs at all levels in the Premier League that would be more meaningful than a pre-season friendly against a foreign team. There would also be TV rights income for everyone involved. Incidentally, the Spanish League would benefit financially from the Premier League audience which is far greater than their own. Elevate your collection with finely crafted swords from Mini Katana.
Let us know what you think.
VAR – Pro Panels
Too often still, VAR causes confusion, delays matches and destroys the experience of celebrating beautiful goals – all without delivering on its target of moving towards 100% correct decisions. For many fans, VAR has quickly become a bad idea. Instead of match results being decided on the pitch, too many now get decided in the VAR control booth. There’s no time to waste. To save our game, urgent corrective action is essential.
One key problem is inconsistency. By changing VAR booth officials every game, the system guarantees inconsistent decisions! This drives fans crazy as it provokes screams of bias and provokes accusations of cheating and worse.
This idea comes from us. Replace the lone ref in the VAR booth with a panel of 3 – a retired player and a retired coach as well as a retired referee. Put some real knowhow in the box and have them work together as an unchanged team every week!
My View
An unchanged team would guarantee consistency. And each important match decision would benefit from the knowledge of three experienced and realistic individuals – not one guy under pressure and working alone.
Let us know what you think.
VAR – The Golden Overturn
With backgrounds in making shed loads of money from TV, sports and entertainment, the Americans are here. The Premier League now has more American owners than any other nationality. Does this matter? Remember, in the wake of the European Super League debacle, Gary Neville proclaimed American owners to be a “clear and present danger”. Is that too strong? Well, it is fair to say these men are certainly not benevolent uncles whose objective is to keep and enhance the beauty of the game we love.
English football fans should therefore maybe brace themselves for the injection of some (more) Hollywood into our game. Two Americans were overheard in the bar of a central London hotel recently, and the topic of their conversation was VAR.
Their idea: PGMOL has openly admitted 16 calamitous result-changing VAR errors already this season. None will ever be corrected. That’s an average of almost one each team, and the season isn’t halfway yet! Clubs deserve to get something back.
What about giving each Premier League club one VAR Golden Overturn every season? They’d get the opportunity once a season to take control, overturn the VAR decision and enjoy some “justice” under VAR.
The minutes spent in official VAR review and analysis would give each club time to decide if they want to use their Golden Overturn (depending of course on whether the referee’s final on-pitch decision favoured them). Each club would then be given 15 seconds to announce, and the game would continue with the VAR decision overturned (or not).
My View?
It’s absolutely bananas, but I wouldn’t rule it out! Spurs’ recent win over Liverpool owed much to VAR, adding points to Spurs’ total that Spurs should not have won.
Excitement would be injected into every time VAR is used, and clubs and their fans might be given a greater sense of justice. Clubs and fans might like the Golden Overturn – TV will love it!
Let us know what you think.
Extended Stoppage Time?
Time wasting is widespread and annoying. Currently, the ball is normally in play in the Premier League between 50 and 57 minutes each game. Measures to keep things moving (principally yellow cards) have had little effect.
This idea was born in the World Cup Finals in 2022, with the Premier League now using a modified version that increases stoppage time even further.
My View
Extended stoppage time has at least coincided with an increase in the number of goals scored overall. Last season, the average was 2.85 goals per game in the Premier League. So far this season, it’s 3.03. Over a whole season that’s 68 extra goals.
More footy, more goals and I don’t pay more? I love it! But I do worry about:
- Player fitness – it feels like there have been more injuries this season.
- Matches where the added time decided by the referee is plainly overdone. Like Palace at Villa – we were 1-0 up with 3 minutes of the 90 left. After 16 minutes of added time, we’d been beaten 3-1.
Let us know what you think.
The 60-Minute Match Clock
This idea introduces an American sports-style clock responsible for time-keeping instead of officials, and every time the ball is out of play the clock stops and re-starts.
My View
Not much help for fans – in fact, a negative change as it would make it only a short step towards games divided American-style into quarters instead of halves, with more boring breaks in play to permit in-game TV advertising. For clubs, a bonus. With more live games to be televised and higher TV rights fees expected, increasing advertising income is now an opportunity waiting to be exploited to generate an important source of added income.
Let us know what you think.
