How Not to Fix Soccer

Question for the Americans: Is soccer really on the brink of becoming a popular sport in your country? I read that ESPN is investing lots of money into the world cup coverage and reddit is full of related submissions.

I was trying to think of a good reason why FIFA continues to refuse to introduce any form of video replay/video referee, and the reason Ed outlines are just what I concluded.

The game is supposed to be exactly the same when played at World Cup level as it is when played at Saturday morning club level, and even below that - the streets of Brazil, etc.

Fifa has got its eye on the global market for playing football, which is what (possibly) makes it the world's most popular sport. It doesn't have its eye on the global market for watching football.

I agree with the article, and the scaling down reasons for not changing the rules for the most part. However, when players are being paid millions, and countries reputations are on the line, there is no scaled down version of that anyhow. And therefore...

There is only one thing I would change: if a violation is noted by one of the refs (such as an offsides), and a goal is scored during that same time the violation flag went up...let the coach have the ability to call for a review of the violation call.

> Question for the Americans: Is soccer really on the brink of becoming a popular sport in your country?

No, but it's slowly trending upwards. Without looking it up, the top American spectator sports are American football, baseball, basketball, NASCAR racing, hockey, golf, and tennis.

The problem is that the best American athletes look to one of top three American sports - if you look at top NBA and NFL players, many of them seem well-suited to futbol, but it's not where the money/popularity/culture is at in the USA yet. As long as the fast and strong American athletes are looking to become running backs, wide receivers, and point guards instead of midfielders and strikers, the game won't reach the height of popularity. But it'll slowly grow in popularity if the U.S. keeps making decent showings internationally. Being a top 5 American sport by 2030 wouldn't surprise me.

After that, it'd really only take one charismatic, transcendental American player for the sport to really break through - if there was an American Pele, Maradona, George Best type player, it'd go a long ways, just like Tiger Woods did for golf, Joe Namath did for American football, Michael Jordan did for basketball, etc, etc. So I could see the game trending up in the rankings, and then it's all about if it gets the one dominant, charismatic force that people fall in love with who kids want to follow in the player's footsteps.

Please no! One of the best parts of Football (IMO) is that the ref rules; it introduces that element of risk that can lead to the excruciating moments that define the sport. "we was robbed".

Besides; in the example you cite in the vast majority of cases it will be ruled as a no-goal (I've seen it happen quite a few times this world cup).