fredvarcoe.com

By Fred Varcoe

How can golf save itself? The advent of LIV has divided the sport and the sport needs to be undivided. The fact that it has been allowed to remain in a state of chaos is a disgrace and nearly all the participants are guilty to some degree. No surprise there. Most sports organizations are run by self-serving, blinkered idiots. They can’t see the bigger picture and don’t want to give up their slice of power. As a result, they don’t have the answers.

Who he?

So, how can a semi-retired sports journalist in Japan have the answer? Well, let me tell you a little story.

The 2002 FIFA World Cup was initially a battle between Japan, South Korea and Mexico. Well, actually, that’s not really accurate. The 2002 World Cup was, effectively, promised to Japan by FIFA’s dastardly president Joao Havelange, the Brazilian Vladimir Putin of football. What was the attraction of Japan, a country that had never qualified for the World Cup? Havelange promised the World Cup to Japan at a time when Japan was arguably the most powerful economy in the world. Japan had stacks of money and, as we all know now, FIFA executives love money.

Unfortunately, not everyone loves Japan, especially South Korea. No way was South Korea going to stand by and allow Japan the glory of hosting the World Cup. So, led by South Korean Football Association President Chung Mong-joon – possibly the most unpleasant and unprincipled man in football, an incredibly high bar that he cleared effortlessly – South Korea joined the party, prompting Mexico to leave it. This party was going to be incredibly expensive.

Inspired by historical hate, the two football associations generously entertained FIFA executives (and their wives) as they made their case to host the World Cup. Japan claimed it had the best football league in Asia – the J. League – while South Korea pointed out that it had qualified for the World Cup five times to Japan’s zero. Both countries had enough money to erect any number of massive stadiums, build roads and hotels, cater to thousands of football fans and express their generosity to FIFA’s executives. All FIFA had to do was to pick one out of two.

By this time, 1995, I had been based in Japan for eight years as a sports writer and I also had a Korean girlfriend. So, I visited both camps, assessed their bids and came up with an answer – the only possible answer.

FIFA hadn’t managed to come up with the right answer and were still staring two wrong answers in the face: Japan or South Korea. FIFA sent a team of experts to assess the merits of the two countries’ bids so that the FIFA Executive Committee could pick a winner.

I knew when the FIFA inspection team would arrive in Japan and on what morning they would read their first morning paper (and I assumed it would be The Japan Times, who I worked for). I ran an article on the back page with the headline, “Cohosting is the only answer for the 2002 World Cup.” And I explained why. The inspection committee – as told to me by a FIFA vice-president – took the cohosting idea back to FIFA headquarters in Zurich and a fight began that ended, as we all know, in the first co-hosted World Cup.

Those are my credentials. I have, of course, come up with many other brilliant ways of improving sport, including how to make football better, but we needn’t go there at present, except to point out that FIFA still thinks penalty shootouts are a good way of deciding a World Cup final. I use this to show how utterly out of touch FIFA can be.

The other example I use relates to the odious Chung. He was once touted as a possible president of FIFA for being “a clean pair of hands.” When I read this in my morning newspaper, I literally spit my porridge all over the table. But I digress. However, I have to mention that the current president of the Korean Football Association is a guy by the name of Chung Mong-gyu, part of the extensive Chung family that controls the Hyundai Group. So, related to Chung Mong-joon who was banned from all football activities for six years by FIFA in October 2015. This was reduced to 15 months because, FIFA told me, of Chung’s “lack of any prior record of unethical behavior, his public stance against corruption within FIFA, and the meritorious services he provided to FIFA and football over the years.” Another table covered with porridge and spit. But I digress.

Indentured, independent contractors

Unlike football, golf doesn’t have a powerful, world governing body like FIFA. It has the R&A in Europe and the USGA in the United States and they generally govern the game of golf and the rules of golf, as well as events like the four majors. There are many tours around the world, including the DP World Tour (formerly the European Tour), the Australasian Tour, the Champions Tour, the Sunshine Tour, the Japan Tour, the Asian Tour, the Korean Tour and, of course, the PGA Tour, which also controls the Korn Ferry Tour and PGA Tour Americas, both of which are feeder tours for the PGA Tour.

And then along comes LIV, throwing cash around to tempt players to abandon their commitments to the PGA Tour and play on an abbreviated but highly lucrative new tour of three-day tournaments with a closed field.

And the insane amounts of cash do their job, pulling in some of the best and most popular players in the world. The PGA Tour cries foul, saying these players are breaching their contracts and have no right to jump ship, even though the PGA Tour calls these players “independent contractors.” I’ve covered this elsewhere, but to recap briefly, if they are independent contractors, surely they are independent from the PGA Tour and free to take their business elsewhere.

But the PGA Tour doesn’t see it like that. The contracts state that these “independent contractors” can’t play anywhere else without permission from the PGA Tour. Sounds like duress and monopoly. Restriction of trade is illegal. In the United States, “restraint of trade covers a broad range of activities, including:

• Creating a monopoly;
• Coercing someone to stop doing business;
• Using non-compete clauses or other contract provisions to prevent someone from conducting business;
• Negatively affecting someone’s ability to conduct business freely.”

I’m not a lawyer, but how does the PGA Tour reconcile this with their designation of golfers as “independent contractors?” Curiously, this hasn’t been tested in court and all lawsuits have been dropped after the PGA Tour and LIV made a provisional business agreement that seems to be lying fallow.

The PGA Tour reacted angrily to LIV and the defecting players, and prompted the DP World Tour to do likewise (although the legal case is still being tested there, so players can still play on the tour). Apart from the majors, the PGA Tour was/ is the pinnacle of golf. That’s where everyone wanted to play, that’s where the competition was best and that’s where the money was … before LIV. But it seems that the PGA Tour wanted to dominate professional golf and was very angry when it found out it couldn’t.

On the surface, LIV’s intervention was a vulgar attack on the PGA Tour. BUT LIV didn’t want to operate in a vacuum and approached the PGA Tour to come to an agreement so that everyone could play golf happily. The PGA Tour refused to talk, and this was a stupid, irrational and self-defeating misstep. LIV didn’t want to destroy the PGA Tour; it wanted to complement it. So the story goes…

But like a jilted husband, the PGA Tour and its lackeys in Europe lashed out, invoking fines and bans for the rebel players. How spiteful were they? Reportedly, players have been fined $100,000 per tournament missed and banned for up to five years. Former PGA Tour winner and now YouTube star Wesley Bryan was suspended by the PGA Tour for appearing in a YouTube event sponsored by LIV, not an actual LIV tournament. Oh, but it gets worse.

As a result of LIV, the PGA Tour has spread its tentacles even further by targeting college players. On May 11, 2022, the PGA Tour announced the following, according to the Golf Channel website:

“For college players hoping to both earn status through PGA Tour University and compete in the LIV Golf Invitational Series, they will now have to pick one or the other. PGA Tour U announced on Wednesday an amendment to its rules of regulations. Effective immediately, players will forfeit their PGA Tour eligibility if they tee it up in a professional tournament that is unranked by the Official World Golf Ranking and not otherwise approved by the PGA Tour. This news comes after last week’s report that LIV Golf had extended membership to the top six players in the World Amateur Golf Ranking, a group that includes several players currently in the PGA Tour U Velocity Global Ranking.”

So, the PGA Tour is trying to destroy golf careers of people who have never been on the PGA Tour.

Resolution No. 9 (and counting)

Clearly, it needs to be resolved. Of course, some people might not want it to be resolved. Tens of players have earned PGA Tour cards because some of the world’s best golfers are playing on the LIV tour. A number have become winners for the same reason. Would Scottie Scheffler be so dominant if Jon Rahm, Brooks Koepka and Bryson De Chambeau were still playing on the PGA Tour? I think not. LIV has created opportunities for many journeyman players on the Korn Ferry and PGA tours and actually that’s a good thing. People can see just how good a golfer ranked #150 or #200 can be. The elitism of the PGA Tour has damaged the game of golf. OK, LIV is a closed shop, but it has livened up the sport and given it new ideas, ideas that the PGA Tour has been happy to steal. I pity those dogmatic haters of LIV who can’t see that a 54-hole tournament with no cut and a shotgun start is always going to be exciting (I’ll pass on the crappy music, thanks).

Lovers of golf do not want to see division and professional golf should provide a stable living for all its practitioners, not just the top 100. The Players Impact Program is an insult to golfers lower down the order. The idea that players who did not jump to LIV should get a bonus is absurd. Everyone has already benefited professionally and financially by the absence of some of the world’s best golfers.

So, we need a settlement. That settlement should make professional golfers true “independent contractors” so that they can play anywhere they want (subject to some eligibility rules). The irony is it’s so easy. By banning LIV golfers from PGA Tour events, it was the PGA Tour that suffered. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot.

The further irony is that the LIV golfers did not want to leave their respective tours and in truth there was no reason why they should have. The top golfers always want to play in the top PGA Tour events, as well as the majors and the Ryder Cup. But the PGA Tour said no and allowed their spite to field weakened fields with golfers that no one had heard of.  If the PGA Tour had said, “OK, let’s see how we can make this work,” things would have worked out fine.

Having criticized the PGA Tour, LIV also can’t escape criticism. Its ambush of the PGA Tour and DP World Tour and even college golf was crude and largely unnecessary. Better timing could have allowed the players to voluntarily hand in their PGA Tour cards. It wouldn’t have made the PGA Tour much happier, but it would have allowed them to do things by the book (although, to be honest, I’m not exactly sure what the book says). Having Greg Norman as the face (and mouth) of LIV was always going to be confrontational. That was never going to work out. Norman had tried his World Tour concept before and the PGA Tour didn’t like it.

So, both sides had contributed to the bad blood between them and left me thinking, “This is Japan and South Korea all over again.” And the answer is almost the same: coexistence.

The truth is LIV was never going to do much damage to the PGA Tour. The PGA Tour basically damaged itself. The PGA Tour said players couldn’t play in tournaments that clash with PGA Tour events without permission. This doesn’t make sense. For a start, most of the top golfers play less than half the events in a year and some PGA Tour tournaments clash with (drum roll) other PGA Tour tournaments. Make that make sense. For example, the Truist Championship is held the same week as the ONEflight Myrtle Beach Classic in May. If the PGA Tour can schedule tournaments against itself, why can’t LIV (and let’s not forget tournaments in other parts of the world, especially the DP World Tour, which is played on far more interesting courses than the PGA Tour)?

Here’s an interesting concept for the PGA Tour: make your golfers true independent contractors and eliminate any restrictions about playing events that clash with PGA Tour events. This, I believe, is what golf fans would like to see. It’s not what the PGA Tour wants to see because the PGA Tour wants to dominate and control top-level golf. And it was doing that pretty well until LIV came along. The PGA Tour is basically the U.S. PGA Tour. Nice courses, good players, not a problem. But LIV and the DP World Tour have shown that there’s a lot of exciting golf played in many, many different countries on some fantastic courses. And results have shown that complete unknowns can come through and play with the elite. Wesley Bryan, pro golf’s St. Sebastian, recalls how he was a nobody doing trick shots on YouTube one year and a PGA Tour winner and top 50 golfer the next year.

Freedom is only going to benefit golf. I’m not saying that the PGA Tour shouldn’t make rules or even require a minimum number of tournaments, but it can rationalize its current system. Tennis did that by grading its tournaments and awarding points accordingly. The world tours can come up with a universal grading system (which it kind of has already for world ranking points) and apply it to their tours. The players can then decide their own schedules. I’m pretty sure the PGA Tour will still win out. Three of the majors are still in the U.S., plus the Players Championship. (I would like to see a World Major added to the international golf schedule, classifying it as a major and moving it to different parts of the world every year). Hopefully, LIV will qualify for OGWR next year and Jon Rahm won’t be ranked No. 81. It will be in LIV’s interests to make a schedule based around the PGA Tour schedule, partly to ensure that the top players will play and also to avoid antagonizing the PGA Tour.

Punishment and compromise

That’s all good, but we still have to deal with LIV. The establishment of another tour outside the mainstream is nothing new and new events often come up with great new ideas, as you can see in other sports such as cricket, volleyball and not football. LIV has shaken up golf and made it realize that the traditional four-day tournament doesn’t have to define tournament golf. But LIV’s ambush of the PGA Tour was dirty and only achieved by throwing obscene amounts of money at players. In its current format, it’s unsustainable. We’ll get to that.

The elephant in the room is punishment. The PGA Tour and the DP World Tour went nuts, banning players outright and imposing ludicrously high fines (many of which LIV has paid). Should the players have been punished? Probably, yes, but that “independent contractor” thing is still rattling around in the background. Let’s remember, the PGA Tour wants the top players back, so imposing fines of $100,000 a week is just stupid. If you want the players back, you have to find a reasonable way to do it. So, step 1: fine the players according to their status in the game, which can be determined by how much they’ve taken home in prize money during their career.

Phil Mickelson will be at the top end of that scale, having won nearly $97 million. Fine him 1 percent of that total. Alternatively, you could come up with a system based on how many tournaments he’s competed in or won, but there’s no reason to make it complicated. A $970,000 fine for Phil makes sense to me.

The second part of re-integration is more difficult: ranking. Phil, a guy who won the PGA Championship four years’ ago, is currently No. 1,159 in the world. My feeling is that the LIV players have to start at a lower level. They can’t just jump back to their previous status. Where applicable, I would allow the top LIV players back into tournaments on sponsor exemptions because then the PGA Tour gets what it wants: the top players. Those lower down the totem pole will have to earn their places back. If they were on the DP World Tour or the Asian Tour, then those tours can decide how to allow them back. Many players have benefited – professionally and financially – from the absence of LIV players from the various tours, so it’s up to those LIV players to fight their way past this new batch of players on merit and earn their place back at the top table. A one-time massive Q school perhaps.

Long live LIV

If it sounds like I’m talking about the end of LIV, then I’m not. I like LIV. I like the 54-hole, shotgun start format and I think the PGA Tour should hold similar events. But I don’t see LIV as financially sustainable in its current format. One of my earlier ideas to change LIV was to make it a four-day event with the team event based on the fourth day of play. All four days would go to deciding the individual winner but the teams for the fourth day would be decided by the results of the first three days. So, Team 1 would consist of the players who finished first, 13^th, 25^th and 37^th. Team 2 would consist of the players who finished second, 14^th, 26^th and 38^th, and so on.

That works fine and would be exciting except that LIV’s financial goals include making the team into money-making franchises. Having different players every week wouldn’t fit that model. But the current model – four players to a team – is too restrictive and if a player’s injured, the team’s down to three or using a sub. My idea is that each team consists of a squad of eight to 10 players. Now, remember, this will work out if the players really are “independent contractors,” so that players can switch between tours during the season. Sure, LIV can tie a few down with appearance fees to make sure the teams don’t consist of college players, but my vision is to have eight to 10 top players in a squad but still only have four players representing a team in any given week (although if there’s no clash with other events, having all eight or 10 players play over four days would be really cool).

And that system takes my next idea a step further: the LIV Tour should be a TEAM EVENT ONLY. Fans love team events and LIV has clearly been trying to capitalize on that, but not very successfully. The team element is always secondary to the individual competition. Put it as the focus of LIV and you have a dynamic, fan-friendly event (hopefully with better names than Smash or the Cleeks). Then, the franchise system will work. Fans would love it, broadcasters would love it, sponsors would love it, and money-grubbing agents and businessmen would love it.

The PGA Tour has already agreed, provisionally, to work with LIV and it could do with LIV’s proposed $1.5 billion dollar donation. I would like to see some of the money in golf going further down the totem pole. Professional golf needs to look at itself in the mirror. If it was starting from scratch, how would it be organized? Probably a lot better than it’s being organized at present.

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APPENDIX 1

After writing this, I smashed my sources into Google Gemini to see what kind of solution AI would come up with. I’ll leave it here….

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Based on reports, expectations from players, and demands from major sponsors, the fundamental solution to the conflict between the PGA Tour and LIV Golf involves unity, financial reconciliation, and structural concessions from all parties, especially the three major entities: the PGA Tour, the DP World Tour, and the PIF/LIV Golf.

Key solution paths and necessary compromises identified in the sources include:

1. Corporate Merger and Financial Integration

The most widely discussed solution involves merging the competing financial interests under one roof, often cited as the only solution by those invested in the game’s future.

• PIF Investment into PGA Tour Enterprises: The Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF), which funds LIV, is reportedly close to finalizing a massive investment into the new PGA Tour Enterprises, which was established earlier this year. Reports claim a deal is finalized or nearing completion that could see PIF invest as much as £1.5 billion into the PGA Tour.

• LIV under PGA Tour’s “Umbrella”: This corporate deal would reportedly result in LIV Golf coming under the PGA Tour’s operational “umbrella,” with the PIF taking an equity stake and receiving representation on the PGA Tour Enterprises board.

• Loyalty Compensation: To resolve financial friction with loyal PGA Tour players, the PIF’s investment is claimed to include funds set up to reward players who rejected massive LIV offers. Alternatively, the PGA Tour loyalists could receive equity stakes in PGA Tour Enterprises.

• Concessions: DP World, a major sponsor, is demanding that all parties recognize the necessity for “concessions and conciliations” to achieve the unified outcome that fans and sponsors desire.

2. Player Reintegration and Scheduling Compromises

A major challenge is determining how LIV players return, and how to restructure the global calendar to bring the world’s best players back together consistently.

• Free Movement Between Tours: LIV player Jon Rahm stated that his ideal merger would allow golfers to “play freely between tours” to enjoy specific major tournaments (like the American Express or Torrey Pines) while maintaining DP World Tour membership for fall events.

• Selective Return Based on Merit: PGA Tour player Wyndham Clark suggested that golfers with strong resumes, such as major winners like Dustin Johnson and Brooks Koepka, have earned the right to return without sanctions, whereas players who lacked that pedigree and left primarily for money should face difficulty returning.

• Avoiding Antitrust Issues: Legal concerns related to antitrust laws mean that LIV Golf will likely need to continue operating in some form after a deal is reached, possibly with a calendar condensed to the autumn to avoid conflicting with major PGA Tour events.

• Specific Access Proposal: Former Ryder Cup captain Paul McGinley proposed a structural solution where the top 10 LIV golfers are granted access to five PGA Tour Signature Events and The Players Championship. In return, the PGA Tour could field two teams in LIV’s season-ending Team Championship.

• LIV Format Change: LIV Golf has independently begun working toward legitimacy by announcing a shift from its controversial 54-hole format to the traditional 72-hole format starting in the 2026 season. This change is intended to satisfy Official World Golf Ranking (OWGR) criteria, which would allow its players to automatically qualify for Majors and remove a major institutional barrier.

3. Structural Changes and Governance

To stabilize the “product” for sponsors, some propose that the PGA Tour adopt elements of the LIV model.

• Mandatory Player Attendance: Paul McGinley argued that the PGA Tour must “evolve away from being a members organization” that treats players as independent contractors free to pick and choose events. He advocates for the PGA Tour administration to take “more in control of the product” by using contracts to obligate top players to play certain events, similar to LIV Golf.

• Global Calendar and DPWT Focus: Sponsors like DP World are demanding a resolution that includes a more integrated tour throughout the year, promoting DP World Tour (DPWT) events and encouraging greater participation from American players outside of the U.S. season. Rory McIlroy has also stated that his vision is for a global calendar.

• DPWT Leverage: The possibility of LIV Golf pursuing a separate deal with the DP World Tour could provide the European circuit with leverage to secure its standing in any future unified golf landscape.

By Fred Varcoe

When Marco Van Basten was Technical Director at FIFA, he came up with a number of ideas to change the game. These included sinbins, no offsides and foul counts for individual players. He didn’t stay long at FIFA, probably because he knew that it is one of the least progressive sports organizations in the world. It still thinks penalties are a good way to decide a World Cup (more on that later).

FIFA is not alone. Many sports organizations are run by fusty old men with no imagination and a misplaced idea of sporting purity. “That’s not football” is probably their motto, but they can still come up with laughable handball rules. Some sports – rugby, volleyball, cricket – have changed with the times and recognized when rules, even the sport itself, had to change. FIFA is change averse, but many fans also have their heads stuck in the sand.

Football desperately needs to reform itself. Even the Premier League is becoming boring. Football has become too predictable and we can probably trace this to Spain and Barcelona, who believed that doing nothing for 85 minutes of a game was entertainment. You can’t argue with results, can you? Can you?

I don’t know, but when I think of great teams, I think of the Arrigo Sacchi’s AC Milan, Alex Ferguson’s Manchester United and Bob Paisley’s Liverpool – winning teams who were great to watch over extended periods of time. Their free-flowing football made them fans around the world and fans of any club watched them with wonder. This was football.

Try watching Tottenham’s Ben Davies or Southampton’s Kyle Walker-Peters (ex-Tottenham) without gnawing your hands off in frustration. I would like to see their stats on passes played forward and passes played backwards. I’m sure backwards wins.

And they’re taking football backwards. In the old days, full backs would hoof the ball forward. Back passes on pitches in the ’70s were dangerous. But Route 1 was actually exciting. It brought an element of randomness and chaos to the game. Predictable, it wasn’t. And, statistically unproven though it is, I don’t believe teams lost possession any more playing football that way than they do with the brain-numbing taki tiki taki crap. Bring back chaos, I say.

The game needs an element of unpredictability and the rules need to change to help that. Other rules also need to change and the people who make the rules need to change. If you have no imagination, you’re not going to improve the game. The geniuses and innovators in our world didn’t succeed by making small adjustments to their products, they brought something new to the table. So let’s try and see what new things could be brought to football’s table. Some are practical, conservative even; others might seem a little strange, but they work for me, but probably because I haven’t wasted energy overthinking them.

The Changes

1. No offside.

Van Basten says: “I think it can be very interesting watching a game without offside. Football now is already looking a lot like handball with nine or 10 defenders in front of the goal. It’s difficult for the opposition to score a goal as it’s very difficult to create something in the small pieces of space they give you. So, if you play without offside you get more possibilities to score a goal.”

It’s been tried before, but I don’t think anyone took it seriously. But why shouldn’t it work? When you see the amount of goals ruled out for marginal offsides, it is frustrating. Defenders should be marking players, not jumping in front of an invisible line on the pitch. How would it change the game? Defenders would still have to mark players and the most efficient way of marking them is to be goalside. Attackers would still be trying to get past the defender. Not having an invisible line to worry about would give the attacker an advantage and that’s what football wants. And it would, as Van Basten says, open up the pitch, make the game wider and more attack-minded. And it would allow referees’ assistants to monitor more important aspects of the game. Ditto for VAR. It would make life a lot easier and keep football flowing.

2. No offside running into your own half

Bit of a dumb rule at the moment. You can’t be offside in your own half unless you run from an offside position in the opposition’s half. Pointless, isn’t it. If you are going to have offsides, this shouldn’t be part of it.

3. No passing back over the halfway line

The horror of possession football is the pass back. Not a little pass to a guy behind you or lateral from you, but a series of pass backs that takes the ball from the corner flag all the way back to the keeper. This is my No. 1 choice for a rule change. It also gives the linespeople something to do. Cut out the safety-first pass back to your center-half or goalkeeper and the game will liven up. The attacking team will have to look forward instead of backward. It will make life more difficult for them, so adding danger/ chaos/ unpredictability to the game. It will also put Ben Davies and Kyle Walker-Peters out of a job. Next time you watch a match, think how the dynamic of that match would change if this rule was introduced. You know it makes sense.

4. No penalties

After watching VAR disrupt football, this one’s a no-brainer for me. Again, there’s limited logic to the penalty area. You get penalized to the same degree for a little (sometimes accidental) trip or handball in the corner of the penalty area by the byline as you do for a deliberate goal-stopping handball. Even with VAR (especially with VAR?), the merit of a free goal is, more often than not, disproportionate to the offense. The penalty area should actually be the goal area with the side lines extending from the goalposts. If there’s a foul in there, you get a regular penalty. Outside of that, it’s just a free-kick as per the rest of the pitch. The penalty area will then just be the area where the goalkeeper can handle the ball. IF there are penalties in a game, as soon as the ref has awarded one, all players must exit the penalty area except the kicker and the goalkeeper, who must go directly to his goal and stand on the line.

5. Three seconds for keepers to release the ball

And talking of goalkeepers handling the ball…. there’s a rule that’s crying out for change. The keeper is meant to release it within six seconds. Nowadays, nobody’s counting. When did you ever see a ref penalize a goalkeeper for holding on to the ball too long? You didn’t. So, the new rule is: three seconds. That’s three seconds from the point where the goalkeeper is in control of the ball and unimpeded and on his feet with the ball in his hands. Failure to release the ball will hand the opposition an indirect free-kick from any spot on the perimeter of the penalty area. I get the impression referees don’t want to count to six; I’m sure they can handle three.

6. No goal kicks

They’ve become a bit of joke, but that’s partly because players aren’t as clever as they think they are. Simple answer: no goal kicks. The keeper merely has to get rid of the ball from anywhere in the penalty area to another player in any way he likes. We’re trying to get the game moving. This does it.

7. Free throw-ins

Why do we have such a formalized method of throw-ins? I don’t think we need it. It would be far more exciting and probably less time-consuming if the thrower could just chuck the ball back into play any way he wants. The ball could go further and it would take less time. And it would be an advantage to the team in possession. Throw-ins now are often so heavily defended (often in a confined space), they are often a liability. Unrestricted throw-ins is the answer. As with the goalkeeper above, there should be a time limit. For throw-ins, four or five seconds once the thrower has the ball under control. And he’s not allowed to hand it to another player to waste time. And if no one moves to take the throw, the nearest player to the ball gets a yellow card.

8. Corner kicks

The area from which corners are taken should be extended. One idea is to increase it from 1 meter to 2 meters and most of the ball should be within the line markings, not 1 millimeter inside the outside of the line. Personally, I would like to see time limits for taking corners: 20 seconds should be enough. The extremist in me would also limit the number of players who can be in the box when the corner is taken to four from each team plus the defending goalkeeper. Another idea, possibly a better idea, is for the corner area to be 10 meters, which is the limit for opposing players, and the corner can be taken anywhere within that 10-meter quadrant. In theory you could take it on the edge of the quadrant, but the opposition would be able to block it, so in practice players would take it nearer the sideline to give them more space.

9. No penalty shootouts

OK, the purists will say I’m being extreme here, but actually, I’m the purist. The penalty shootout is a curse on the game. OK, it’s decisive and can be exciting in a masochistic kind of way, but it’s a terrible, terrible way of deciding a World Cup final or two-leg European Champions League semi. Football games should be decided by actual football or something very close. The fact that FIFA hasn’t even thought about changing from penalty shootouts shows their complete lack of imagination and sheer incompetence. So, how do you change it? I always liked the idea of sudden-death goals, but apparently TV companies didn’t because it left empty air time. And it still doesn’t guarantee a finish to the game. My solution will help, although it’s not guaranteed. If extra time is needed, the first session should be 20 minutes. The difference is each team has to lose two players. If there’s no result after 20 minutes, you play another 20 minutes. This 20 minutes is sudden-death – the first goal wins – AND there are no goalkeepers, although multiple substitutions can be made. That should get a result. If not, maybe I’ll allow penalties, but there is a better alternative….

10. Corner shoot-outs

Van Basten has suggested the old American style shootout where a player dribbles the ball unopposed from outside the box and has to score within 10 seconds, but if you want to do away with extra time, there’s a better way: corner shoot-outs. Each team gets 10 corners from which they can score within 10 seconds after the kick is taken. Only four players from each team is allowed plus the kicker and the defending goalkeeper. The corners are taken in groups of five. If there’s no result after 10 corners, you just keep going until you get one. You could also reduce the number of players to three, two or even one from each team. My ideas involve much more real football than the penalty shootout, so the purists should be on my side, not FIFA’s.

11. More cards

I believe it was before the 1994 World Cup when FIFA said they wanted more aggressive refereeing. So the refs got more aggressive and started dishing out lots of cards. Fans didn’t like it, so FIFA, spineless as ever, told the refs to stop showing cards so liberally. It was a golden opportunity to make the game better. If FIFA had had the courage of their convictions, football would have changed. They just had to stick with the program. One idea of strengthening the position of referees is for infractions to have a points system of one to four or five points. Sounds a little complicated, but it’s not. A bad foul is five points. If you get 10 points, you’re off. Kicking the ball away or swearing at the ref could be two points. Time wasting is one point (it’s not really much of an infringement as the ref can always add time on – more if he’s vindictive). It won’t be hard on the refs. All they have to do is put the points total on the card and show one to five fingers to the player. And it’s the responsibility of the player to check, not the responsibility of the referee. To help the referee, the fourth official should be allowed to advise on or even make decisions in the event that the referee misses something or makes a mistake.

Plan B is to have three cards: yellow, blue and red. Yellow would be for minor infractions, blue for fouls and deliberate handball and red for anything Roy Keane has done. Four yellows, two yellows and a blue or two blues results in a red.

12. Rugby rules

Rugby has a pretty disciplined approach to the rules and football should have the same, so we need to adopt some of rugby’s rules.

a. Sinbin: I haven’t figured this out exactly, but sometimes two yellow cards is not equivalent to a red. Players are getting red-carded for treading on people’s feet, while Jordan Pickford gets nothing for turning the best defender in the world into a cripple. The good thing about the sinbin is that it is instant justice affecting the two teams as they play;

b. 10-yard rule: This has been mentioned but never seriously considered. If a team is awarded a free-kick against them, then the rule should be that no opposition player can touch the ball until the free-kick is taken so we can do away with this childish habit of not returning the ball to the team that gets the free-kick and play can resume quicker. Also, if a player fails to make an effort to retreat 10 yards from the ball, the attacking team can move the ball forward up to 10 yards. It should be the responsibility of the player to get away from the ball, not the responsibility of the referee. Penalty for not doing so: another 10 yards and a yellow card;

c. No complaining: Only the captains can question a decision by an official and all players must keep a distance of at least 2 meters from the referee when the ball is dead. Players swearing at the officials shall get a yellow card;

d. Bonus points: It’s about time teams were rewarded for scoring goals. I would prefer to see a system of, for example, 10 points for a win, five for a draw and a point for each goal scored. Hopefully, this would end the pathetic system of deciding a league on goal difference. No major league placings should be decided on goal difference. If two teams are equal on points, have a playoff.

e. Don’t stop for injuries or substitutions: Medical staff should be allowed to enter the field of play at their discretion, but play should not stop (except for certain extreme circumstances). Likewise, the fourth official can take care of substitutions instead of the referee. Again, play needn’t be held up.

13. VAR

There are those who say that the offside rule is clearcut, so if your fingernail is in front of the defender’s toe, you’re off. But is the letter of the law defeating the spirit of the law? If you’re going to draw lines across the pitch to check for offside, then go all out. My answer is to draw lines from points on the head, chest, hip, knee and toe. If three of the points are offside, it’s offside. Otherwise, it’s OK. Can VAR handle this? I actually suspect VAR technology isn’t very good, but if it is good, then use it properly. Going the other way, perhaps there should be no lines at all and no slow motion (others have suggested having a player making the call as well as the VAR official). At least then you’re getting a more realistic on-pitch decision. But you’d still want VAR to determine the really big things, like did the ball go into the net.

14. Stop clock

In the 2021/22 season, the average time the ball was in play was around 55 minutes but some games barely make 40 minutes, while others got close to 70. Time added on by referees often seems random and time-wasting is still a common practice. A time clock is a no-brainer

****

My image of the football that I love is that it is basically a non-stop game with a large helping of unpredictability combined with skill. My current view is that most teams are intent on playing by numbers and the backpass is now a tactic rather than an act of desperation. The chaos of my cherished football also led to more moments of inspiration. Football used to be an organic game; each match had a life and identity of its own, and players had identities, unlike the plug-and-play mercenaries of today. Football needs to move itself and its players out of the comfort zone and rediscover its imaginative qualities.

 

Marco Van Basten recently suggested making some radical changes to football’s rules and the way it’s played. Football doesn’t like change and Van Basten came in for a lot of flak in the media and online. Below is my response to one critical article.

Critics of Van Basten seem to have fallen into the same dull thinking that FIFA has suffered from for too long. OK, no one could be quite that bad, but too many people think football is almost perfect and doesn’t need changing.
How on earth can anyone (especially FIFA) think that a penalty shootout is a good way to end (after nearly four years of competition) the biggest sports tournament in the world? It’s absolutely pathetic. A football match should be ended as much as possible with … a football match.
One possible answer (which I’ve never seen anywhere else but just seems to make so much sense to me) is to reduce the teams to nine men in extra time. I would play 20 minutes of that with a Golden Goal winning the match (another good idea that FIFA couldn’t handle). If there’s no result after 20 minutes, then play 10-15 minutes (or sudden death) without goalkeepers. Sounds radical, but the two teams will still be playing football, not shooting from 12 yards.
If you want a direct equivalent to the penalty shootout, how about a corner shootout? Maybe with four or five outfield players on each team (perhaps five attackers and four defenders to make goals more likely) and with a 10-second limit for a goal (the guy taking the corner isn’t counted as an outfield player). It wouldn’t take longer than a penalty shootout and might actually be quicker. It would certainly be more interesting.
As for quarters in a game. Well, studies have shown that the action in football lasts for around 55-65 minutes; so let’s say it’s an hour and have a timekeeper like in American sports. I have no problem with a game being divided into quarters but actually think dividing a football match into thirds would be better with two 10-minute breaks so the teams have enough time to have a cup of tea and a piss. This will change the timing of the game, but really it won’t affect the football at all.
Sin bins might also be a good idea. My alternative is that yellow cards should be come with a points system. At the moment wasting time and breaking a player’s leg can carry the same punishment. Writing a number down next to somebody’s name is not going to be an added burden for the ref (although maths might be for some). How about a three-point system? Maybe OK. If you get five points, you’re off. People will say that players might get confused. That’s their problem. If the ref blows the whistle, the players have a responsibility to pay attention to what he says and does. So, he calls a foul, shows the yellow card, puts two fingers up (yes, I know…) and off we go. The red card would still be an option, of course. Or maybe we only need one card with a five-point system.
Do away with offsides? This has been trialed before. It sounds like it might be a good idea and would do away with the most contentious decisions in the game. I think it would make the game more interesting but would like to see it trialed again.
If you want another sensible and radical suggestion, try this: Do away with penalties. Penalty areas have become a joke. So many people fall down, it’s like a recreation of the Battle of the Somme. (Perhaps part of the answer is to bring back the obstruction rule. When was the last time you saw that used?) But the best answer is simply do away with penalties completely and award a free-kick. (I’d also like to see the penalty area removed from the pitch but it’s needed as a goalkeeper area.) Of course, awarding a direct free-kick one yard out might create difficulties, but indirect free-kicks have been awarded in similar positions. I would suggest that the attacking team could have the option of moving the ball back 5 or 10 yards on a direct line from the center of the goal.
Another idea that has been considered is to let trainers on the pitch while the game continues to avoid unnecessary (and fake) injury stoppages. This has the potential to be disruptive but again is something that could be worked out if people would just open their minds and think about it.
And that’s where the problem lies. FIFA and the F.A. and football in general have been run by people with severely limited imaginations and thinking power. Marco Van Basten is one of the most enlightened footballers of all time, so dismissing his ideas is somewhat insulting. There’s a whole bunch of radical ideas that could be realised (how about a Champions League made up of champions?). Mr. Infantino has just raised the number of teams in the World Cup to 48; that makes sense when you realise that the best football competition in the world is not the World Cup but the European Championship.
The problems start when people shut down their imaginations and limit their thinking. Other sports have made radical changes with really positive results (volleyball springs to mind; also cricket to some extent); football has been lagging behind.
Debate the ideas and come up with alternatives; don’t just shut them down because you don’t want to change. Well done, Marco, keep the flame alive. It takes perseverance as I (and FIFA) discovered when cohosting was suggested for the 2002 World Cup. “It can’t happen,” Blatter told me in a letter.
But it did….

A short story by Fred Varcoe

Mr. C (which may or may not represent his name, but could also stand for Complete C***) knows all about corruption in FIFA.
And knows all about corruption in business.
In fact, he’s one of the world’s most corrupt people in one of the world’s most corrupt countries. He’s made zillions of dollars from being corrupt. He comes from a corrupt family.
I guess “C” could stand for Complete Crook.
Daddy even bought him a fake educational certificate from a famous university.
Mr. C treats all others with contempt. He was born into richness and privilege and snobbism and a massive superiority complex. Other people are meant to bow down to him.
Mr. C likes football.
So he tried to buy it.
He bribed his way into a position of power in his country and then went to a meeting of powerful football people in his region.
He took along some dancing girls and lots of envelopes.
He put lots of money in the envelopes.
He also gave lots of money to the dancing girls.
Before the meeting, all the powerful football people had a party.
At which the dancing girls danced.
All the powerful football men thought the dancing girls looked lovely.
And many of them thought they’d like to fuck them.
Mr. C said no problem. The dancing girls were there to make people happy.
As were the envelopes full of cash.
The next day, Mr. C stood for an election.
All the men thought Mr. C would make an excellent football executive.
After all, he had lots of money – and dancing girls.
So they voted him in.
Mr. C became a powerful football person.
He mixed with football’s elite.
He was, in fact, one of them.
Even though they hated him and knew he was corrupt.

This is a dramatic reconstruction based on actual events.
Here’s another one involving Mr. C.

Curious George, a newspaper reporter, went to talk to Mr. C.
They had a nice chat.
George wrote an article that said Mr. C was a good chap and should be running football on his own – or something like that.
The next time George went to Mr. C’s locale, Mr. C said thank you. They had a drink in the company of Mr. C’s manager, Dick.
But Mr. C was a busy man, so he had to go.
Dick took George to a nice restaurant. Dick paid.
Dick took George to a nightclub. Dick paid.
Dick said: “How do you like the women.”
George liked them very much.
He wanted to fuck all of them, but this was an expensive fucking place.
Dick gave George an envelope.
“This is to cover your taxi expenses,” Dick said.
There was $500 in the envelope.
That’s a lot of taxis, George thought, before thinking once again that he’d like to fuck all the women in the nightclub.
“Who’s your favourite,” asked Dick.
This is a toughie, thought George.
But he thought he’d be polite and come up with an answer.
“The one over there with the big tits,” he replied.
Dick called Big Tits over and they had a chat.
George also enjoyed chatting with Big Tits, although he can’t remember what she said.
Dick said he had to go.
“Big Tits will go with you wherever you want; everything’s on me.”
He winked.
George got his drift and rushed back to his hotel with Big Tits.
He woke up thinking that Mr. C really was a fine fellow and wrote that in his newspaper.