Comments on: Soccer Should Borrow from Basketball and Hockey

By: Isegoria

Isegoria — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 19:34:13 +0000

I suppose soccer (association football) has a meta-problem of too complete control from a centralized authority, with no room for experimentation. I'd love to see some minor leagues experiment with hockey-style offside rules or sending players off for a limited time for (mildly) dangerous play.

By: Herman Benschop

Herman Benschop — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 13:39:25 +0000

Soccer (as a Dutchman I prefer to call it football, of course) has a set of rules that has hardly been changed since 1870. In Europe debate has been going on for a long time about changing some of its rules. But FIFA is not about to change anything, mainly because of their bosses being from 1870 also. A clear example: in a majority of the cases it is physically impossible for the referee or linesman to ascertain if a player is off side or not. That is because the referee or linesman has to see two separate things at exactly the same moment:

the position of the player
the moment the ball is played forward

The problem being that these two incidents occur on different areas of the field. Video recording could help out here, of course, but FIFA don't wanna know. They're too busy arresting Dutch girls for wearing orange dresses. In the end it doesn't really matter. Like Gary Lineker said: "football is a game for 22 players — and in the end the Germans win".

By: Isegoria

Isegoria — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 01:22:46 +0000

Tripping is an awkward foul, because it depends so much on the victim’s effort to stay standing — effort that curiously vanishes, because there’s such an incentive to fall down spectacularly. Basketball fouls don’t suffer from this problem, at least not to the same degree, because the offensive player can go on to shoot and score and still get the free throw for being fouled.

By: John

John — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 00:35:57 +0000

“[Soccer] should take its cue from basketball, which awards one point for a free throw awarded after a foul.”

Here’s the thing: generally speaking, a basketball player is awarded two free throws after being fouled, putting it back in parity with a normal field goal. To be the same as basketball, I suppose a soccer player should get two penalty kicks then.

“Note that if several players are off the field, the game opens up, thereby increasing scoring changes.”

Probably not likely to happen. In a typical soccer game 2-3 players are carded. You see more than that in a hockey period. I would also say that if there is one thing that soccer doesn’t need, it’s further reward for the histrionics displayed by “fouled” players.