It may border on the obvious. Even the axiomatic. But football can be boring. And not only because it is often sole topic of conversation between most males aged in between the 12years-80years bracket. As Pele says "the game needs goals", and as a physical contact sport defensive or negative, play is often unduly rewarded in scrappy 1-0 affairs or 0-0 at home contests.
It seems strange that while fans love teams that play exciting football UEFA or similar have so far found no way to commend it. Only the laughable Fair Play league makes any gesture towards it.
In light of this I have devised the Flare/Flair Play League. It does not yet reward flashy back heels or stepovers but attacking teams are allocated more points than those organised, yet dull, outfits that always seem to feature in the UEFA cup places come the end of season.
By this reckoning my team, Everton, would not be enjoying lofty pretensions. George Graham's Arsenal would have had a lesser dominion, and Kevin Keegan's Newcastle would probably have won the Premiership. We would hold that man in much higher esteem if this had been the case. Maybe this woudl be a good thing. He always struck me as more likeable than idiot. At the very best he would be a likeable idiot that once won the Premiership. It still recognises defensive superioty by only rewarding extra points for games one by clear goal margins. It works like this:
WIN BY 3 CLEAR GOALS OR MORE (EG 3-0 OR 4-1)= 5 POINTS
WIN BY 2 CLEAR GOALS OR MORE (EG 3-1 OR 2-0)= 4 POINTS
WIN BY 1 CLEAR GOAL (EG 1-0 OR 2-1) = 3 POINTS
SCORE DRAW= 2 POINTS
NO SCORE DRAW (1 POINT)
Under this system the current premiership looks like this (I think, my math might be skewiff).
Arsenal 29
Man U 28
Blackburn 26
Man City 26
Liverpool 24
Portsmouth 23
Newcastle 21
Chelsea 20
West Ham 19
Aston Villa 17
Everton 15
Totenham 13
Wigan 12
Middelsborough 11
Fulham 11
Sunderland 10
Reading 10
Bolton 9
Derby 8
Birmingham 7
Under this system most games would become much more attacking affairs. And it is likely that the yawn-induding Italian style football would become a thing of the past and there would be less sleepy end of season fixtures. Above all it is fair. Winning a game 4-0 is much harder than winning it 1-0.
A question for Spurs fans. If Totenham were sitting pretty in mid-table would Martin Jol still be about to be sacked?
P.S. In my work induced haze I cannot remember which version of flair/flare to use when describing flamboyant skill and panache. Hence the slash in flare/flair
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4 comments:
Great idea if you want to turn football into basketball. The value of a goal as an experience is diminished by this idea. You need to think about how rare goals are as part of football's appeal, as it allows all that homosexual repression to be purged in one minute of jubilation. Your idea would further civilise what is rightly a savage affair.
Yeah, this is why I don't condone making the goal bigger, or playing on a smaller pitch. Really though, I don't think smaller scores mean that much. 5aside is as, uh, homesexually repressed as 11aside and the scores are much bigger in that. Mmm? Bigger scores, smaller box. I feel a connotation coming on...
I would like to see teams deducted goals when a player gets a red card. It would be great to see a scoreline
Team X 3 Team Y -2
Also, AC Milan should begin all CL games with a 1 goal deduction. This would make up for the preposterously allowed to stand offside goal OR that was never a penalty kick penalty kick that they receive in each game.
For similar reasons, Barca should start every game against an English team with 10 men. This is because the referee always makes a point of sending off the English team's best player in the first leg to give Barca a boost at Camp Nou.
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