World Cup 2026 - Official Thread

While it might add some interest to the shitshow that football has become, more stopping and coaching and creating protracted set plays is contrary to the spirit of football, and fundamentally changes the game into something else. It also helps maintain the disparity between the haves and the havenots, and it diminishes the spectacle of the game itself, in favour of commercialising the peripheral klingons.

Let me explain.

In football, one of the pure beauties of the game, compared to many other sports, is that play is continuous. For me everything should come back to this, and every rule change should promote this. I know that since football has become owned by monied interests, and this is contrary to their interests, that it's not going to happen. But I am not minded to buy the shit they are shovelling, and I will keep kicking against the pricks.

Let's go back. If we look at football on it's purest form - the Royal Shrovetide football game in Ashbourne, for example. There are no breaks in play, apart from overnight, there are no set pieces, apart from the commencement of hostilities. People might wander away from it for a bit, and have a bite and a pint, before wandering back in and rejoining the scrum (rolling subs), but the game goes on. Early Association football was played as a predominantly individual game of skill - where a player would pick up the ball, and try to execute individual skill to try score a goal. If it was lost, someone else would pick it up, and try to exhibit skill to score a goal. The scots introduce a concept where instead of just this form of repeated individual skill based play, the ball was passed to different players, to expose gaps and opportunity, through 'combination play'. Football remained in this broad form of setting up combination play, allied to individual skill for breakthrough moments, for over a hundred years. It was the game that achieve worldwide prominence for it's beauty, simplicity, and excitement. Play remained broadly continuous, even when players were (literally) broken.

This continuous nature of the play, and thus the need for players to exhibit skill, physique, team-play, and judgement, in equal measure is the fundamental that underpins football as a compelling spectacle. Early 'managers' were called 'trainers', they prepared the players, and sent them out, but then the players had to problem solve and find a way in game. Teams had a balance of attributes, mental and physical, there wasn't a 'right way' to football. All sorts of different things could work, and moments of skill could often be the major differentiators in matches. The difficulty of scoring a goal led to a statistical lumpiness that levelled the playing field and meant that outcomes had jeopardy.

Look at where we are now. The (interpretation of the) laws of the game are such that the physical contact component of the game has gone. To stop play all a player has to do is draw contact, go down, and achieve a protracted reset (spanish dancing). The financial constraints around investment, coupled with the disparity of income, means that 'big' clubs can buy the physically most powerful (in terms of running - look at Gordon, a shit footballer, great at running patterns, and falling down), and they can reset the game at any point to prevent the opposition having an attritional and 'in game decision making' advantage over them. On these resets they can take time out of the game to threaten in dangerous areas using their unfair power advantage. They can retain the ball without putting it at risk, because the opposition can't clump them out of it. So with 'systems' football (rather than a balanced physical and skill based game) these powerful players accumulated by a small virtually unchallengable bunch of 'big' teams, can run patterns without jeopardy - leading to a game heavily weighted by set pieces and penalties - over which they can take almost unlimited time out of the game. There's no premium on skill and individuality, just run the percentages and attrition the set pieces. In the unlikely event that it is not working, it's all fall down and reset, until the brains of the unit on the sidelines can re-programme the running patterns, to best attrition an advantage, and eliminate a clever exploit a lesser team has found. By making the game riddled with stoppages it allows for increased opportunity for the technical coaching unit to analyse and re-programme the runs, and to ensure resets to maximise the unfair power advantage and eliminate variability.

Ad breaks, to allow coaching opportunities will increasingly happen - because it suits the vested interests, but in terms of football - it's a disaster for the game. All of the 'radical' ideas I have long supported are to make the game continuous, and provide the opportunity to actually play some football, and put that premium back into the players using judgement to manage the game.

Coaches can prep their little pre-programmed running patterns, and send a message on to switch at any time. I do not support stopping the game to make it a game of spreadsheets rather than skill and judgement. I'm not paying to watch coaches. I'm paying to watch physical skill beyond that which I could dream of.

If I was running football, it would look very different indeed. It's quite clear where the direction of travel is here -football has been corrupted, in terms of it's spectacle and jeopardy, purely as a vehicle to commercial interests to exploit consumers and eliminate variability in favour of established brands. Those brands (clubs, branded players, non-traditional competitions with business, rather than football, control) are not about to threaten their investment.

You can believe that aspects of it have an arguable value, if you want. I don't. Of course it's happening anyway, whatever you or I think about it. Your stuff. Has been bought. It's not ours any more and you'll take what you are given. Perhaps wise of you to persuade yourself that it's what you really want anyway.