Starting a new thread for this. It's that important.
What's wrong with soccer?
1. Lack of scoring. The complaint of lack of scoring is not to say that ONLY goals are exciting. Goals are exciting, but great defensive plays, great runs, great saves, near misses, etc are also exciting. The lack of scoring causes other problems for the sport. It results in too many ties. Ties are not always bad, but the high number of ties and games decided by PK's are bad. Also because scoring is so low, playing for a 0-0 tie is a real possibility for many outmatched teams. Also, because scoring is so low, one bad officiating call in the box will likely decide the outcome of a game. All this is bad for the sport.
Possible solutions: Right now the average goals per game is around 2. I would try to move that up to closer to 5 by experimenting with the following, with the goal of changing the nature of the game as little as possible.
--penalize the goalies: make them take off those ridiculously thick gloves, maybe make the goalie box smaller, allow the goalie to touch a ball with his hands but not catch it or hold on to it
--make the goals slightly bigger
--open things up by making it 10 vs 10 or even 9 vs 9 instead of 11 vs 11
2. Poor officiating and bad rules related to yellow cards and red cards.
--put more ref's on the field and/or allow linesmen authority to make all calls
--instant replay for important calls
--make it three yellows = red, not two. too often two questionable yellow cards results in a team losing a great player and going down 10 vs 11
--make a red card a 5-10 minute timeout like hockey, not off for the rest of the game
--toss the rule about accumulating yellow cards over multiple games = red card in tournaments. It's absolutely ridiculous to lose star players in big tournaments because of accumulating ticky tack yellow cards
3. PK's are terrible way to end games. And because of the 50-50 nature, bad teams play for a tie on purpose. Starting with the first overtime, tweak the rules to ensure there will be a goal scored in a reasonable amount of time. ie drop from 11 to 9 to 7 to 5 players after certain time periods. Or eliminate the goalies altogether. Anything to make sure you'll have a goal.
What's wrong with soccer?
1. Lack of scoring. The complaint of lack of scoring is not to say that ONLY goals are exciting. Goals are exciting, but great defensive plays, great runs, great saves, near misses, etc are also exciting. The lack of scoring causes other problems for the sport. It results in too many ties. Ties are not always bad, but the high number of ties and games decided by PK's are bad. Also because scoring is so low, playing for a 0-0 tie is a real possibility for many outmatched teams. Also, because scoring is so low, one bad officiating call in the box will likely decide the outcome of a game. All this is bad for the sport.
Possible solutions: Right now the average goals per game is around 2. I would try to move that up to closer to 5 by experimenting with the following, with the goal of changing the nature of the game as little as possible.
--penalize the goalies: make them take off those ridiculously thick gloves, maybe make the goalie box smaller, allow the goalie to touch a ball with his hands but not catch it or hold on to it
--make the goals slightly bigger
--open things up by making it 10 vs 10 or even 9 vs 9 instead of 11 vs 11
2. Poor officiating and bad rules related to yellow cards and red cards.
--put more ref's on the field and/or allow linesmen authority to make all calls
--instant replay for important calls
--make it three yellows = red, not two. too often two questionable yellow cards results in a team losing a great player and going down 10 vs 11
--make a red card a 5-10 minute timeout like hockey, not off for the rest of the game
--toss the rule about accumulating yellow cards over multiple games = red card in tournaments. It's absolutely ridiculous to lose star players in big tournaments because of accumulating ticky tack yellow cards
3. PK's are terrible way to end games. And because of the 50-50 nature, bad teams play for a tie on purpose. Starting with the first overtime, tweak the rules to ensure there will be a goal scored in a reasonable amount of time. ie drop from 11 to 9 to 7 to 5 players after certain time periods. Or eliminate the goalies altogether. Anything to make sure you'll have a goal.
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