As you no doubt recall, Marco van Basten recently used his standing as FIFA’s technical consultant to propose a raft of new rule changes to help spruce the beautiful game up a bit.
As well as orange cards and ‘American’ penalty shoot-outs, the legendary Dutch striker suggested that the offside rule be scrapped entirely to help facilitate more goalmouth action.
To put Van Basten’s pioneering theory to the test, 11 Freunde had two amateur sides – Tennis Borussia Berlin and Hertha ’03 Zehlendorf, if you must know – play a standard 11-a-side game, with the only exception being that the offside rule would not be upheld.
These be the results…
So, unspectacular and largely action-less games with linesmen who are bored to tears?
You can probably go ahead and count on FIFA to follow this one through.