I read a column by Mark Douglas of the i last week. It was the headline that caught my eye. None of us is immune to that particular trap.
“FFP rules are not fit for purpose – Newcastle are being punished for ambition”
In my defence, that’s impossible to ignore. So I bit.
If you’re a regular reader and you click on any links in this newsletter you’ll have worked out that the i is my sports newspaper of choice. Douglas is a reasonable man, as far as I can tell, and a journalist with whom I’ve no problem at all.
So I did him the courtesy of actually reading the thing. Sure enough the headline was towards the edgier edges of what he actually wrote in the column. He makes a ton of good points because, ultimately, it’s basically true that FFP rules are not fit for purpose.
Yet the Newcastle United angle made me think. Douglas paraphrases an argument from some football finance expert that financial fair play doesn’t safeguard clubs in terms of profitability or sustainability. Given the stated or assumed aims of FFP, that’s a problem.
But there’s another side to FFP. The fair play bit. That’s not a reference to protecting clubs from themselves but maintaining a level playing field between them. Obviously, it doesn’t work.
But if the argument is that Newcastle or anyone else should be able to make huge losses because their owners are minted, then I’m sorry but I’m not having it. Super-rich club owners are as much a reason to have financial regulation in the transfer market as irresponsible shysters.
I’m not a fan of FFP as it currently operates in the Premier League, in the EFL or in Europe. It does have problems and Douglas identifies some of them in his column. I do, however, advocate measures to increase parity on the pitch.
If you’re in favour of removing FFP because you think Saudi Arabia should be able to spend and lose as much money as it wants to build a successful football team, you’re reading the wrong newsletter.
If you think it should be canned because it’s fatally flawed then you and I have a difficult question to answer: how do we replace it in a way that doesn’t artificially kibosh ambition but still protects the integrity of football?
Speaking of which…
The Magical Mystery IFAB Whimsy Weekend
The men’s football calendar is packed in 2024. The Asian Cup and Africa Cup of Nations are happening concurrently during the 2023/24 league season. EURO 2024 will follow in the summer along with Copa América and the OFC Nations Cup, not to mention the Olympic Games in July and August.
It stands to reason that a busy 2024 makes for a quiet 2025. Indeed, with this scheduling pinch point in the rearview the stage is clear for the CONCACAF Gold Cup and FIFA’s brand spanking new 32-team Club World Cup in the summer before a World Cup year proper.
With FIFA looking the other way, hobnobbing in the United States of America, one might reasonably expect the London-based alliance of UEFA and CONMEBOL to put their feet up. But that would be lazy, wouldn’t it, and we can’t have that.
UEFA-CONMEBOL is one of the most influential forces in world football. Why not give IFAB a call and have some fun while Gianni Infantino is behaving impeccably and entirely legally and above board somewhere else?
Change is always just around the corner in football. If something isn’t about to be changed there are millions of fans shouting that it should be, usually parping on about common sense and how “everybody” can see this or that and “everybody” wants exactly the same thing to be done about it as they do.
There are likely some significant changes in the works at this very moment, and a few problems without obvious solutions that fit into the framework of how we’ve come to understand the game. If the advent of the video assistant referee has taught us anything, it’s that football doesn’t do enough testing before dumping its half-formed tweaks out into the world and calling them trials when they’re actually being applied to real matches with real consequences.
Testing doesn’t need to be boring, nor must it take place behind closed doors. What the International Football Association Board needs in the summer of 2025 is a laboratory weekend facilitated by the governing body axis that somehow made Finalissima stick. All they need is a couple of pitches and a complicated ticketing system. Maybe NFTs or something.
It’s a simple enough proposition. Six teams come together for a football whimsy extravaganza in the sun. They play in two groups of three and the two group winners meet in the final. Each of the seven matches is played under standard football rules with one experimental exception: an innovation under the microscope. Some are serious considerations. Others are offbeat and chaotic in the name of scientific discovery.
The tone of the weekend would be necessarily jovial but there are legitimate reasons to try out some weird stuff with an open spirit. Whether they’re rule changes that have been suggested in the real world or simply designed with unexpected consequences in mind, exploration is a noble pursuit.
Over the course of seven games, IFAB would learn a whole raft of lessons just by trying to break the sport. Every innovation has potential, has pros and cons. A laboratory weekend would be a chance to gather masses of data on the functional and tactical results of flicking a switch or turning a knob.
Do I have seven innovations in mind? I thought you’d never ask.
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The 60-Minute Clock
The idea of a game clock that stops when the ball is out of play strikes me as folly. It’s entitled nonsense, powered by the utter fallacy that football matches are supposed to consist of 90 minutes of ball-in-play time. That’s never been the case. A 60-minute clock has also been mooted and is much closer to reality.
Ice Hockey Offside
Just one football match played with ice hockey offside. That’s all I ask. Just one. In this experiment the offside line is moved to the top of each attacking third and the rule is very simple: players can’t enter the attacking third ahead of the ball but if any part of the boot is on the line, it’s onside. After a clean entry the attacking team cannot be offside again until the ball leaves the zone. Chaos. I recommend a wide line for extra toe-dragging.
Dynamic Offside
If that doesn’t take your fancy, here’s another test. In the third match, only the furthest player forward in a team can be offside. While the law remains essentially the same in every other regard, this effectively creates a mobile offside line and a free area behind it where all manner of football fun can take place.
9-A-Side
It’s been a long while since I’ve heard anyone calling for smaller teams. The argument was that football is 150-plus years old and professional athletes nowadays are massive. There’s a logic to that, certainly, but I’ve always been of a mind that the game evolves and tighter spaces is just part of that. Let’s have a look anyway.
Rolling Substitutions
Player wellbeing is a big topic of discussion in football. It’s the basis of complaints about fixture congestion and comes into play in a whole range of debates among supporters and pundits. Unlimited substitutions are used at some levels of the game but always (to my knowledge) with the ball dead. What happens when that constraint is removed?
The Position of Zero Opportunity
There are football formats that limit whence a goal can be scored. It would be interesting to see the impact of that in the full 11-a-side game, where tactical theorists and coaches have long understood statistical scoring probabilities. Creating chances close to the opposition goal is a common tactic. Removing the ability to score from inside the six-yard box might lead to more significant consequences than we might expect.
No Headers
The abolition of heading in football is a fundamental change that has its supporters. I’m open to the idea; concussions and other serious head injuries are no joke. I could be persuaded either way when it comes to a full or partial ban but I would like to see what football looks like, how it might develop, with the bonce outlawed.
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These are all valid and essential experiments in football, I’m sure you’ll agree. If you’ll excuse me for being silly for a moment, this laboratory weekend proposal also has space for football’s most farcical nonsense. Yes, there’s always room for a bit of VAR testing!
Throughout the seven matches we’ll trial VAR as it should be if it must be at all. The idea of manager challenges doesn’t appeal at all. What are we going to do, give them both three challenges in each half and penalise them with the loss of a timeout if they fail? Please.
But the current blanket review process isn’t adequate. VAR is a clear and obvious error. And, loath though I am to admit it, managers chucking in a red flag is probably in the ballpark of the most logical solution.
If a manager decides they want a goal or a red card decision overturned – and that should be the extent of its reach – they can ask for a review as many times as they like and without cost.
The catch? They must give a specific rationale in the form of a technically sound reason for the referee to review the decision. Nothing else can be checked – no secondary check, no running entire sequences back to look for any reason to disallow a goal, no freeze frames.
Some of these innovations are demanded often, others not. The IFAB laboratory weekend would be a platform for open-minded experimentation in the basic spirit of finding things out whether the results are anticipated, surprising or entirely out of the blue.
You can be sure I’d pay to be there.
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“The ball just will not go in for Darwin Nunez, but Anfield regulars have not joined in the social media pile-on whenever the Uruguayan passes up another gilt-edged opportunity – they know his value goes beyond goals.”
Pete Hall on Liverpool striker Darwin Núñez. I absolutely love Darwin Núñez.
Salty beef extracts
Franz Beckenbauer was a player out of time who made football evolve with him (The Guardian)
Boca Juniors Women lead way in Argentina but bar needs raising further (The Guardian)
Samuel Iling-Junior: the young Englishman on the rise at Juventus (The Guardian)
Digital death threats in sport: 'There's no space to run' (DW)
Amazing Afcon: (Un)familliar to millions (Morning Star)
Sporting Kansas City betrays fans with hiring of Gavin Wilkinson (Kansas City Soccer Journal)
Dessert
This is the Mizuno Alpha 'Prism Gold'. Verdict: broadly in favour.
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