The first big trip of this year’s summer break is to St. Pete (our St. Pete, not the other one) for some IB training so that I can teach senior IB classes eventually. The IB folks put us up at Tradewinds on the beach, and it’s on the district’s dime.

“They” neglected to tell me there was a tropical storm scheduled to come through these parts during the conference. Driving in was fun: clear skies alternating with curtains of rain so heavy that you couldn’t see more than 20 yards ahead. Well, maybe you could, but I couldn’t. Thankfully, the GPS let me anticipate some of the twists and turns in the road. I was proud, normally TomTom doesn’t come through for me in the heavy rain.

The room’s pretty nice (click to embiggen pics):

The view’s kind of grey for now, but hopefully it’ll clear up a bit tomorrow. Here’s my view of the Gulf of Mexico under Debby’s thrall:

Gigi’s down the street served a decent veal saltimbocca. I have yet to try the cannoli. For six bucks it better be good. I’ll report back.

[June 27, 9:24PM] The cannoli was pedestrian.

Here are some more of the changes I’d be interested to see. They aren’t subtle, and might change the game a bit too radically. So I’d love to see an exhibition tournament among top teams with one or more of these rules in place, or maybe one of the weaker national leagues (e.g., MLS, Scotland, J-League) could experiment with them for a season. Here goes:

1. This is the least likely to happen, and the most expensive to implement, but if you want to see more goals (as I do), then make the goals bigger. The size of the goals (eight feet tall, eight yards wide) hasn’t changed in at least a century, but the goalkeepers have gotten bigger and more athletic. So make the goals bigger to compensate. I wouldn’t make it too much bigger– just big enough that those shots that currently hit or slip-just-past the post would instead go in the net. It’d be easier to score on a long shot, which could draw defenders away from the goal and open up space behind them.

“What about penalty kicks?” one might whine. “A bigger goal makes it even harder for the keeper to stop the shot.” Well, too bad. That’s what you get for having hacks on your team.

2. Abolish the offside rule altogether. In theory, this would give the most skilled players more room to operate and allow the offenses to flourish. Would it lead to more cherry-picking? Possibly, but remember: the further up you leave your attackers, the easier it is for the other team to outnumber your defense. A lot of fans think that the ebb and flow of play is due to the offside rule; that it keeps the 20 field players in a sort of globular band that shifts up and down the field instead of having them cherry-pick and blast the ball back and forth like in a bad U-10 game. But I’m not sure the flow of play would be that much different without the offside rule. Teams would still try to keep their shape for the most part.

With no offside rule, I would want a little more protection for the goalkeepers, just to keep certain tactical “accidents” from happening to them. Maybe you give them more leeway in their boxes, maybe you broaden the area in which they can use their hands. That’d cut down on the cherry-picking a bit.

I said this would create more attacking space “in theory” because the current offside rule gives defenses an incentive to get away from their own goals: doing so forces the offense to back off. For really weak teams, the lack of an offside rule might actually increase the incentive to pack eight or nine guys in the box and leave them there all day.

(I’m not a huge fan of this idea– as a fullback I loved pulling an offside trap– but I’d like to see what would happen without the offside rule.)

3. What I hate most about soccer is that it takes a long time for minor fouls to add up to anything major. Say you’re on defense deep in your own end of the field. One of your opponents makes a bad pass, you get the ball, and you’re about to launch a 4v3 counterattack… but your opponent bumps you, or trips you up, or grabs your shirt, which kills your team’s chance at a 4v3 run, and the ref blows the whistle.

If it were hockey, the ref would blow the whistle, your opponent would go to the penalty box, and you’d have a power play. The advantage is restored.

If it were basketball, the ref would blow the whistle, your opponent and his team pick up a foul, which means you’re either going to shoot some free throws or you’re closer to shooting free throws. Either the advantage is restored directly (free throws) or the punishment is rapidly and visibly accumulating via team fouls (free throws in the immediate future if they keep it up).

In soccer? Oh well. Maybe it looked like a minor foul that only warranted a talking-to from the ref, maybe the ref is discerning enough to see what your opponent did and he shows a yellow card, but there’s no way to get that 4v3 opportunity back, because your momentum is dead and the other team has time to get all 11 players behind the ball.

You might point out that enough yellows will mean red, but what if this foul occurred early in the game? If I’m the opponent, you’d better believe I’ll risk a yellow card to disrupt that transition, especially since goals are so hard to come by. Let me rephrase: I have taken yellow cards to disrupt that transition, and it paid off every single time.

So if we want to discourage that sort of “professional foul,” we need a way to restore the advantage immediately. We need a way to restore the 4v3 or 5v3 breakaway. Here’s how:

When a foul is committed, only X players from the offending team may line up between the ball and their own goal line.

I think six is a good value for X (keeper plus half the field players). So if I get fouled as in the scenario above, then on the restart, my team sort of has that advantage back. See the industrial-grade diagram below:

The red team is defending the bottom goal and attacking the top goal. The blue team fouled the red team, and the ball (orange-yellow bullseye) is ready to be put back in play. Five blue guys have to line up behind the imaginary green line, i.e., farther from their own goal line than the ball.

That may not look like much of an advantage for red, but it’s better than having the entire blue team between you and goal. Sure, blue can hold off a 10v5 long enough for the rest of the team to get back on defense, but they’ve got to sprint to get down there and they’ll be winded. This rule would also make it harder to set up walls on defense– a three man wall leaves just two defenders available to mark up until the rest of the team gets back.

Maybe you tweak the value of X, or maybe you apply this rule only in certain situations– for instance, this should not be the penalty for being caught offside. But if you want to crack down on professional fouls, this is the way to do it– by keeping the guilty team from setting up their defense.

It might also lead to more diving, but if you remember a few posts back, we’re feeding those guys to lions.

…

A few years ago I read an article by some guy about making soccer a higher-scoring game. He had some really wacky ideas, but he also had some very valuable insights. One of his ideas fascinated me, but it probably has less of a chance of happening than anything I’ve suggested: he wanted any slide tackle to result in an indirect free kick. Not a yellow card (unless it was rough enough to warrant one), just an indirect. In other words, you can disrupt your opponent’s progress with a slide tackle, but you can’t win possession. His reasoning was that it would lead to fewer injuries and more room to maneuver for attacking players. You can still slide tackle, but he’d make it more of a last resort– do I give them a free kick or let this guy beat me? Defenders would be a little more hesitant to slide. It’s a good rule for beer leagues, but I don’t think the pros or the internationals would go for it.

With the Euro tournament in full swing, soccer’s on the brain. Here are some of my suggestions for changing the rules of the game. They aren’t that radical, they’re just some minor tweaks that I think will improve soccer without rendering it unrecognizable.

1. Permit more substitutions. Right now there are three, I say increase it to five– i.e., half of your team’s field players. More substitutions would mitigate the effects of injury, players wouldn’t get worn out as quickly (a growing concern due to the dense club, cup, and international calendars), and the careers of the best players would last longer. Remember back in 1990, watching that old lion Roger Milla coming on for Cameroon the last half-hour and showing the whippersnappers how it’s done? No? Well… it was fun to watch.

2. I hate seeing players fake or exaggerate injuries, I hate the theatrics of fakers grabbing their heads no matter which part of their bodies were “injured,” I hate the stretchers and the magic sponges that miraculously heal the “injuries”– so why not make the faking more costly? Let the referee force a team to substitute “injured” players. If you’re going to flop over in an attempt to waste time or to draw a foul, then I’m going to make your team burn a substitution and get you out of the game. So stop diving.

3. Currently, if a player gets a second yellow card in a game, he is ejected without replacement, so his team plays short. Furthermore, he is automatically disqualified from the next match. I think that big of a punishment scares refs away from throwing second yellows, so it needs to be lightened a bit. A second yellow card should not lead to automatic disqualification from the next match (though you may still want to have punishments for excessive accumulation of yellow cards throughout a season or tournament). I think it’d make the ref more willing to show yellow cards and get hacks out of the game.

4. Currently, goalkeepers cannot use their hands on any ball that has been kicked to them by their teammates, but they can use their hands if the ball was passed with almost any other part of the body. So I can shin, knee, thigh, hip, butt, back, chest, or head the ball back to my keeper and have him pick it up, but my foot somehow gives the ball cooties. I’ve never heard a good reason for this. It’s a silly loophole. Keep it simple: keepers can’t handle the ball on any back-pass.

5. Currently, if a player commits a foul to stop an “obvious goalscoring opportunity” (see Law XII), that player is ejected and a free kick is awarded. If the foul is inside the penalty box, then it results in a penalty kick. Fine. But if the foul is outside the penalty box, it’s just another low-percentage free kick. True, the player gets ejected, but his team can re-group, set up a wall, and will probably stop the goal from being scored. I’d rather have the obvious goalscoring opportunity back. Maybe we’ll keep the red card rule, maybe we’ll ditch it, but a takedown on a breakaway should result in a penalty kick, regardless of where the foul occurred. I’d rather have a high-percentage shot right now than have the other team play short the rest of the game.

6. Keep the goal line judges, or whatever they’re calling the extra refs on the goal lines. You have linesmen positioned on the touchlines to see if the ball goes out of bounds, why not have the same on the goal lines? I think the extra set of eyes on the field will also help keep the players in line.

7. The most confusing part of the game is the offside rule. I’d love to see what would happen if we simply abolished offside or used an offside stripe a la hockey, but the following modifications would probably be acceptable to most folks:

a. Right now the rule is that if any part of the attacker’s body (aside from hands and arms) is nearer to the opponent’s goal line than the second-last defender’s body or the ball, he is in an offside position. I say change that to give the advantage to the attacker: if any part of the attacker’s body is level with any part of the ball or any part of the second-last defender’s body, he is in an onside position. Not sure? Tie goes to the attacker. It’s easier to call than the current rule, and gives the offense a better chance to get behind the defense.

b. Right now the rule is that if an attacker was in an offside position when the ball was played to him, the ref can blow the whistle, even if he’s onside relative to the second-last defender when he receives the ball. Well, the point of the offside rule is to prevent goal-hanging or cherry-picking, right? How is he doing either if he doesn’t get the ball until there are two defenders between him and the goal (i.e., he’s onside)? If an attacker receives a ball while onside relative to the second-last defender, he cannot be called offside. Not sure? Tie goes to the attacker.

I’ll present my more radical proposals tomorrow.

P.S. @Azzurri: Nice of you guys to squeak through! I’m glad it didn’t come down to that BS set of tiebreakers UEFA uses.

Soccer is far and away my favorite sport, but I believe it could stand to make some changes– not just for the sake of making the game more palatable to the American market, as non-Americans often accuse, but to make it more enjoyable for everybody, assuming everybody’s tastes and preferences are the same as mine.

The first change I would make is the addition of Law XVIII to FIFA’s Laws of the Game. Here goes:

A player, substitute, coach, match official, observer, non-observer, or other type of human being shall be dipped in ungulate fat and locked in a cage with no less than five hungry lions if he commits any of the three following offenses:

• simulation or “diving”
• time-wasting
• criticizing American(s) for using the term “soccer” instead of the term “football.”

(a) The lions shall not be so weakened by hunger that they are unable to eat any person(s) guilty of any of the above offences.

I’m looking at you, England. America didn’t invent the word “soccer,” we got it from you. It’s your stupid abbreviation for “association football.” You guys don’t dive as much as other folks, and you don’t waste as much time– that’s noble; I applaud. Now let’s see if we can cut down on the pedantic whining about slang you guys invented. That way, you won’t get eaten.

More ideas tomorrow.

WARNING: Spoilers ahead. If you haven’t seen the movie yet and do not wish to have any element of the story revealed, don’t read this post. There’s no spoiler-text on this one, so proceed at your own peril.

Click here to read my rambling review.