Dear Editor,

Football can be an exciting sport, but it can also be very boring and anticlimatic. We’ve all seen two great teams play great football, matching each other’s skills, tactics, and strategy, toe to toe, head to head…neither being able to gain the upper hand, and the match ends in a draw. No result. Exciting football, but in the end you still feel unsatisfied.

Then there’s the problem of deciding games by penalty shoot-out. We saw many during the recently concluded Euro 2020, right up to the finals. Did the best team win? Or was it the team with the better penalty kickers? Does this make them a better team? Could it be that the winning team simply has a better goalkeeper?

Five and six-day Test cricket were well on the way to becoming dinosaurs. Then came one-day, 50-over cricket, but the game was still faltering. Finally, Twenty20 cricket came along, saved the game from extinction, and revived it financially.

The USA has the greatest sports marketing machinery in the world, and even with all of that they have been unable to bring football — soccer, as they call it — out of the doldrums and up to par with their other major sports — American football, basketball, and baseball.

Their sports marketers found that sports fans want to see high-scoring games, periodic breaks in game play, and definitive results. Football has none of that.

I have analysed the game and have settled on 10 rule changes I would like to suggest to make football more exciting.

1. No throw-ins — kick-ins only, the ball can’t go above waist height (like in field hockey), and no direct shots on goal.

2. No back kicks — the goalkeeper can move the ball around and drop-kick.

3. All direct free kicks must be taken from the penalty spot.

4. Corner kicks can be made from the corner to midway the halfway line.

5. A maximum of two red-carded players may return or be substituted at the expense of the team manager, coach, assisstant team manager, or assisstant coach.

6. If a returned red-carded player gets another red card, he’s banned for three games.

7. Make goalposts higher and wider by 18 inches.

8. Substitutes brought on in the last 15 minutes can’t participate in a penalty shoot-out.

9. Fixed 30-second and 60-second timeouts to allow for more TV advertising.

10. Earphone communication is to be allowed from the team manager and coach to the on-field captain.

Sheldon Neil

sheldon@goodwilltucker.com