Two of my favorite intellectuals, Arnold Kling and Richard Epstein, have each offered opinions on how to “improve” soccer. I am dismayed and disappointed. Their proposals are not for modest changes (e.g., electronic assistance for the referee) that would preserve the basic feel of the game. Instead, they want to induce “more scoring” (Kling) and make the game more like basketball and hockey (Epstein).
Kling’s post is particularly frustrating. It begins with the sentence:
I am not a soccer fan.
In my opinion, this should be the end of the post. If Kling does not appreciate soccer, can he not at least leave the several billion of us who do alone? If Kling feels six words is too short for a blog post, he can follow it up with this:
Therefore, I have no opinion on this game that brings joy to countless other people. Value is subjective, and I am happy to respect others’ subjective preferences.
If Epstein believes that his rule changes would improve the game, he should start his own modified soccer league and profit from its success. I would wish him the best of luck. But I am pretty sure he would not succeed, and that is because most of the world is basically happy with the way soccer works now.
As my regular readers know, I despise meddlesomeness. People should basically leave other people alone, particularly if they are not interested in receiving help or advice. However, I cannot resist the urge to engage in some retaliatory sports meddling, offered with my tongue implanted firmly in my cheek.
I am not a baseball fan. It’s too slow and boring. I propose some rule modifications borrowed from basketball and hockey. First, baseball needs something like a shot clock. I propose that no player (especially the pitcher) be allowed to hold the ball for more than five seconds, and that no more than 30 seconds should elapse between pitches under any circumstances. Violations of these rules will result in two minutes in the penalty box, and the defending team plays a man down. These modifications would not only increase the speed of the game, it would result in the elimination of fat people from professional baseball. Let’s face it—the fact that you can be both a fat slob and a successful baseball player is a damning indictment of the game.
Update — Kling, always a class act, tempers his claims: “…I gladly admit that my opinions should not count, since I know nothing about the sport.” He makes other interesting points in this new post, with which I mostly agree, addressing criticisms other than mine.
18 Comments
Oh, c’mon. Offering one’s opinion on how a sport can be improved is hardly meddling. The rules and procedures for sports change all the time; American Football is very different today in some respects than it was twenty or thirty years ago. And it’s a lot more different than it was a century or more ago, when it was basically just Rugby (in my opinion, the greatest sport of all).
Technology now makes it possible for many more people to be publicly engaged in discussions of just what the changes should be, and I hardly think it’s a bad thing. I greatly disagree with your “indictment” of baseball but actually think the shot clock idea is a good one that could potentially enhance the game. Glad you decided to meddle ;)
Offering rule change proposals is not meddling. Offering rule change proposals when you have basically no appreciation for the sport is meddling. It is particularly egregious when your goal is to change the entire character of a game that billions of other people enjoy.
It’s not meddling until you’re actually doing something, which clearly Arnold has no power to do (and it’s doubtful he’d do it even if he could). Looking at a game you don’t like and thinking about how you might turn it into one that you do is not meddling, it’s just a fun thought experiment.
Repeatedly bringing up the fact that billions of people enjoy the game as it is makes it sound like there’s something on the line here, but there isn’t. It’s just someone thinking through writing; no harm, no foul.
Fair enough, but it’s the disposition to meddle that is the problem. I’m not worried that either Kling or Epstein will succeed in changing the game, but I still find the attitude off-putting.
I’ve never really liked the “off-side” rule. Instead of adding rules, I wonder what would happen if we removed some.
Pietro, I know that sometimes FIFA sponsors exhibition games where they try out modest rule changes. I saw one in which they replaced throw-ins with free kicks from the touchline. I would support at least some experiments with eliminating offside calls. I think you’d see longer forward passes, which might make the game uglier, but your proposal is at least modest enough that it’s worth considering, and I like your attitude about removing rather than adding rules.
I’m just not sure where discourse ends and meddling begins. It seems like you could take Kling’s post as a general statement that he likes it better when less rather than more luck is what determines the outcome of a game, and an argument that his changes would reduce the amount of luck involved in who wins a soccer game. I understand it sounds like he’s got a meddling disposition because he says that soccer “ought” to be changed.
Well, I guess you either find the attitude offputting or you don’t; you know I’m not a soccer fan so it makes sense that it wouldn’t bother me. Here’s my question: do you dislike something like Kling and Epstein’s posts more than you dislike just straight trash-talking about soccer?
Yes. I think it’s a combination of the unsolicited nature of the advice, the fact that the advice-givers do not believe the problem they are remedying to be of any great significance, and the failure to appreciate that others do attach perfectly legitimate subjective importance to the culture and feel of the game. I think I would feel the same way about similar critiques of baseball, ballet, or body hair waxing.
You can induce more scoring without changing the “basic feel” of the game. I like to talk about potential rule changes in all the sports I watch. I believe you change the basic feel of the game by NOT changing the rules, as teams adapt to the rules and develop strategies that are successful but undesirable. Almost all sports undergo major rule changes from time to time.
In terms of increasing scoring in soccer, my favorite suggestions involve modifying the complicated offside rule, which in my viewing experience is often called inaccurately and severely limits scoring chances. Ironically perhaps, the introduction of the offsides rule to prevent attacking strikers from goal-hanging is one of the major changes that have been made to the game.
Relatively major rule changes aren’t unheard of in soccer and, in fact, have saved the beautiful game. For instance: the rule prohibiting a keeper from handling a back pass, which made it harder for a side to run out the clock when they had a lead. Check out http://www.livermorerefs.org/FIFA_History_of_LOTG.htm
See this paper for some other interesting “meddlesome” changes http://www.stat.umn.edu/~glen/papers/soccer5.pdf
Zac, your point about the rules needing to change over time is well-taken (I don’t support stasis), but I continue to think that rule changes that would induce enough scoring to bring the law of large numbers into play would indeed change the feel of the game. Furthermore, I don’t see the back pass rule as a major change—it seems pretty minor to me.
The evolution of rules over time is fine with me, but any single rule change should be modest and the changes should be driven by people who have an appreciation for the game and therefore an appropriate sense of what constitutes an improvement.
If you were blogging 100 years ago, you would probably say to Henry Ford: “Stop meddling around with transportation. Everything works great!! See how much everyone loves horses?”
Well:
Like you, Eli, I enjoying reading Kling and I love soccer.
However, unlike you, I do see the logic in what Kling is saying. Kling is basically showing his desire for true fairness by having the luck of one play as a deciding factor diminished in soccer.
It’s true that in soccer, unlike Major American Sports, it’s very easy to dominate and lose or draw. It’s also true that unlike with major American sports, you are infinitely more likely to hear people discuss “fair results” or “deserved results”. The reason you hear this sort of commentary by announcers so much is that it’s very common to have a myriad of events during a game that could changed the score….yet the more “deserving team” won….thank god.
Again, I’m a huge soccer fan but I do see the logic in making scoring a little bit easier. It would reward teams who play “the beautiful game”.
I see, Eli; I agree with you, people who don’t like a sport at all have no business meddling with it. Rule changes should come from people with a deep appreciation for and understanding of the game as it has been played historically and is played currently.
John, I understand Kling’s logic and agree with it as far as it goes. It’s true that higher scores would make refereeing mistakes less costly. But there are a host of other factors that I don’t think Kling appreciates about the game, and therefore I think it’s best to be modest about proposed rule changes.
Incidentally, if people want a higher scoring version of soccer, they can watch futsal. The fact that it has not taken off (yet?) suggests that many people are basically satisfied with the low scoring version.
Eli,
The fact that futsal has not taken off probably has more to do with money and star power. The real question is if normal football would see an increase interest and spectator enjoyment if some of the more subtle rules from futsal that encourage scoring were implemented.
Look, I’m not talking about 9-7 or 10-15 scorelines. But how about 4-3 or 3-2 or 5-3 being more commonplace instead of 1-0 or 1-1 or 2-1?
This isn’t just an American thing. An overwhelming amount of fans in every country want some use of technology to clean up bad calls that are easily overturned and fixed if we allow this recourse. The same people would love post-match reviews to remove or hand out cards and fines for bad fouls that weren’t called or to right a wrong done to a player who was carded for over-the-top simulation as players role around in false agony. In turn, a nice suspension for that thespian would also please fans. People want simple attainable justice to improvement the game. AND, fans like goals. Fans like action. Few fans from any country would be against mild changes to double or nearly double scoring. ANd by doubling scoring were talking about going from 2.2 to 2.7 goals avg. per game to 4 or 5. Not a big deal. If scoring were just a TEENSY bit easier, the better team would get its due far more often. Great defense and bad luck will always be there. But with a few more goals average per game, the team that plays better in all phases will likely win more often. This doesn’t happen in football as often as it should….especially in tournaments like the WC.
John, I agree with much of what you say, but I still think there is a huge difference between, say, adding instant replay and trying to induce more goals. How would you even do the latter? Make the goals bigger? Make the field smaller?
Also, what are the unintended consequences of rule changes? If typical scores were 5-3 instead of 2-1, would fans (and players) get as excited when a goal was scored? Is it possible that fans prefer higher peaks of excitement to higher average levels?
For these reasons, I think that rule changes aimed at affecting everyone should be modest, incremental, and to my original point, deliberated among people who appreciate the game, not people who begin from the premise that soccer is boring.
Agree with this last point. It’s strange that a trained economist like Kling would miss this point, but there’s definitely a tradeoff between amount and accuracy of data. Kling and others have made this point frequently with regard to voting and markets – markets are meant to be more accurate because the votes are weighted. If points are easy to score, players are less invested in them. A large portion of the reason I love soccer so much is because goals are rare and important. Contrast with basketball, where although I enjoy watching the athletic skill on display I could generally give a flip about the score because it’s so ridiculous.
In the current World Cup, there’s an average of 2 goals per game.
In the 60s and 70s, the average world cup game had about 4-5 goals.
Why soccer fans of 2010 think the game that Pele played was so horrible is beyond me.
One of the reasons baseball has steadily declined is that they have refused to make/enforce rules that will deal with the ways competitors seeking advantages have altered the fan experience. At one time, baseball featured less time between pitches, lots more balls in play, more running, and very few fat guys. It evolved into its present form by competitors seeking advantages. (Watch a game from 1965 on ESPN Classic sometime). The powers that be have refused to tweak any rules because they didn’t want to mess with “tradition” (as if Babe Ruth adjusted his jock after every pitch). To serious fans, this is a minor annoyance; to the casual viewer, the sport has become nigh-unwatchable.
American Football, on the other hand, tweaks the rules every season. They do this in response to the evolving game on the field. If quarterbacks are getting injured, they put in rules to protect them. Too many touchbacks leads to moving kickoffs back five yards. Blown calls lead to instant replay. The fan experience is paramount, especially the causal fan. The result is that in the last 2 decades football has blown past baseball as the US national sport, and is getting a foothold internationally despite massive disadvantages (complicated, expensive, etc.)
Now: Which approach is FIFA’s closer to?