At a time of growing disinterest among new generations in football matches, everyone has their own idea to try to redefine its contours. Arsène Wenger saw his proposal on offside find an echo on the other side of the Atlantic, with FIFA confirming that the Canadian championship would now test this new rule (the former Arsenal coach wanted a player to be flagged in an offside position only if his entire body exceeded that of the last defender).
Emblematic number 10 of the French team, Michel Platini had submitted the idea of ​​revitalizing the game by removing one player per team, thus moving to matches of 20 players, and no longer 22. Aurelio De Laurentiis, boss of Naples, did not go that far, but the film producer and director remains no less inventive. In an interview given to The Athletiche presented several of his ideas aimed at seducing and retaining young audiences.
2 x 25 minute matches
During this long interview, De Laurentiis notably proposed the idea of ​​moving on to actual playing time, like what is done in basketball. According to statisticians, the actual playing time of a football match is around 60 minutes. De Laurentiis suggests moving on to football matches lasting 50 minutes, but with playing time counted (two halves of 25 minutes). “I would reduce the length of each half from 45 to 25 minutes. In this 50-minute match, playing time will be counted, without the referees recovering minutes through stoppages in play at the end of the half.explains the Italian leader.
To another extent, De Laurentiis wants to remove the boxes in their current form, and instead replace them with temporary expulsions. “I would say: “you go out for five minutes (for a yellow card), and you go out for 20 minutes (for a red card)“!” He wants to penalize a player’s actions more in the current match, rather than in future ones, and adds that some players deliberately take cards in order to cut off opposing actions, without this being sanctioned in a “significant” way in the game.
A super European championship… but which will not be called “Super League”
Often singled out for its use taken to the extreme, VAR should be rethought according to the Naples boss. He also regrets the lack of goals, which he puts down to the offside rule: “We need to score more goals. And to score more goals, you have to change the rules. We cannot cancel a goal by a few millimeters… Offside must be reviewed, and not just a little”.
De Laurentiis puts forward other crazy ideas which should make Italy cringe. For example, he proposes a Serie A with 16 clubs and adds: “Still, if a team has less than a million fans, they probably have no business there.” Another idea: a “super championship” made up of the five best teams from Italy, four from Spain, three from France, four from Germany and five from England, but which he refuses to call “Super League”. Everyone will have their own opinion.
