Marco Van Basten Wants Some Surprise Changes Implemented in Football

Netherlands legend Marco van Basten landed a new role with FIFA a couple of days back and will now serve as chief technical development officer - whatever that means.

In all seriousness, it's quite an important role that will see the former AC Milan man will deal with all the key areas in football such as video technology and refereeing. He is basically tasked with improving the game of football.

As reported by Dutch news outlets, van Basten has a host of interesting ideas to make the game of football that much better and more enjoyable for all. However, some of the changes the 1992 World Player of the Year wants to implement are sure to divide opinion.

First and foremost, he is in favour of introducing a video referee. We have already seen this being trialled - in fact it was used recently to decide the severity of a player's challenge in a Dutch Cup tie between Ajax and Willem III.

Another one of his ideas is to have a green card which would see a player sit out for a period of 10 minutes, much like we see with sin bins in Rugby.

His vision also includes to open the transfer window a month earlier for clubs and to have just one Cup competition in each country.

Up to now, these are all fair and good.

But then it gets utterly bizarre.

The 51-year old apparently wants to get rid of the offside rule, a long-standing tradition in the game of football. Remember in football in PE how many goal-hangers there were? The offside rule stops people like Flippo Inzaghi standing up top and banging them in - imagine how many more goals he would have had if the offside rule wasn't a thing?

Moreover, van Basten plans to have hockey-esque shootouts as opposed to penalties. Why change a winning formula? Stick to scoring thunderous volleys in the 90's, Marco.

His final idea is to not stop play for substitutions - which would stop players taking an absolute age to get off the pitch in a tense, nevery affair but could also get quite chaotic.

(h/t RTL Niews)

Topics: Football, World Football, FIFA, Holland

Josh Lawless

Josh is a sports journalist who specialises in football and wrestling. He has been published by Curzon Ashton FC, Late Tackle, Manchester City FC, The Mirror, Read Man City and Manchester Evening News. He provides coverage of professional wrestling and has interviewed some of the biggest names in the field - including the first UK interview with The Hardy Boyz after their return to WWE. He has never sported a pair of Lonsdale Slip-ons, contrary to reports.

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