Van Basten Is (Mostly) Right

Dutch soccer legend Marco van Basten has copped a hiding in the world’s press in recent weeks for tackling one of sport’s great sacred cows: the rules of soccer.

Some of his ideas are admittedly off-target: replacing penalty kicks from the twelve-yard spot with ice hockey-style breakaway penalties is unnecessary and has led to vicious reactions from the most anti-American sections of the world game’s supporter base.

But almost everything else he has proposed is spot on. The details vary depending on what media outlet you read, but here’s a brief rundown:

Four quarters instead of two halves: English fans booed drinks breaks at league games earlier this season, but extra breaks are a no-brainer given player burnout and global warming. Will it take another Marc-Vivien Foé for soccer to get with the program?

Maximum sixty matches per year: the devil is in the details, but player burnout is a serious issue.

No extra time, drawn matches straight to penalties: don’t agree with this one, but the thinking behind it (reducing player burnout and doing away with cagey, scoreless half-hours) is sound.

Six substitutions instead of three: a small step towards unlimited, rolling substitutions which speed up and tactically enrich any sport they are introduced into.

Orange cards (10-15 minute sin-binning for minor second yellows): introduces another layer of punishment for players who are cautioned for a foul and then, say, hand-ball in the centre circle or take their shirt off during a goal celebration.

Abolishing the offside law: van Basten is thinking outside the box, but as I will explain below, he has the right problem but the wrong solution.

Having witnessed the debates around limited/unlimited interchange in both the AFL and NRL in recent years, I have become a convert to the cause of free substitution. Limiting substitutions in any of the invasion sports is a concession to the purists who want slow play and unfit players, and who abhor coaching and sports science. Soccer, like rugby union, sticks to the antiquated model of a single-digit number of one-time-only subs.

Van Basten’s musings about the offside law have caused the most consternation, provoking invective from Arsène Wenger and Jürgen Klopp, among others. The Dutchman made the point that soccer today sometimes resembles European handball, with nine or ten players dropping deep to defend against attacks. Increased fitness and the judicious application of tactics and sports science is the cause of this: the average distance run per match by outfield players has doubled from 5km in the 1970s to 10km today.

Abolishing the offside law in isolation wouldn’t alter this, and indeed the increased space in the midfield would encourage teams to drop more players further back. What is needed is something like lacrosse’s offside law (which limits teams to placing no more than six of their nine outfielders in either half of the field at any time) or the anti-defense rules used in the NHL in the 1920s (which barred teams from having more than two defenders in their defensive third if the puck was in their attacking two-thirds of the rink).

But van Basten was right in his observation that soccer backlines can often resemble handball’s perimeter defences, something which has gone unaddressed by the purists who howl at any proposed change to their beloved offside law except for the changes that have been made in the past.

As These Football Times notes, liberalising the offside law actually makes teams more defensive and enlarges the midfield. The 1925 change from three defenders to two resulted in the shift from the 2-3-5 formation to the W-M (3-2-2-3). The tweaks made in the Era of Blatter took us from the 4-4-2 and the 3-5-2 to the modern 4-2-3-1, with its two specialist defensive midfielders.

In the centre of the pitch, more numbers behind the ball means more uncontested passing: the last changes to the offside law gave us the word tiki-taka and possession percentages. But a bigger midfield can actually diminish the importance of midfield play, as an attacking team has space in which to move the ball unmolested towards a retreating defence. Just like in basketball and handball.

Barring teams from having more than six outfield players in one third of the pitch (which would necessitate the addition of two extra white lines), a rule borrowed from eleven-a-side outdoor European handball, would spread players out more and force teams to work the ball through a crowded midfield.

Or, we could accept that the sport has evolved and that packed penalty areas and lightning counter-attacks are the wave of the future.