Football

This is something that has always been on mind and I’ve always been keen on right from the start of my life:

PHOTOS:

I was born in March 1969 – thinking all you have to do is rotate the 9 and you’ve got a 6 – 1966 – the Victory Year for the originator country of football: England.  It looks like I’m in goal here!!

Many years ago, in the 1990s I thought of something I called FOOTBALL FOOT SQUARES this was inspired by playing the game of RISK where you played to gain territories, clearly the territories on the RISK board game are not FOOT SQUARES, a foot is 12 inches or 30 centimetres, they are enormous.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I was considering Mediaeval Jousts in the field and Roman Gladiatorial Contests in the Colosseums all over the Roman Empire.  Men who liked a fight did so in the less lethal field of play.  This did not mean killing other people who did not want to join in.

PICTURES OF JOUSTS AND CONTESTS:

 

 

 

Current ways of doing war are certainly not playing well.  This was also the case with the Royal Families of Europe which led up to World War One.  I’ll explain.

If only things were played differently.

King Edward VII and the Kaiser loved to sail.  The Kaiser was the Kings nephew and the King was the Kaiser’s Uncle.  They were closely related.  The King was not the oldest child of Queen Victoria but he was a boy and boys came first in those days, his sister also called Victoria, Princess Victoria was older than him.  She was also better behaved and more of a good pupil too, hard working and diligent.  She instead of becoming Queen like her Mother went to live in Germany where her Father Prince Albert had come from.  When the Kaiser was being born there were problems with this and he ended up with a Disability of a withered arm.  Still he carried on his life in good humour.

Now back to the sailing.  They competed in Cowes every year, sailing around the Isle of Wight.  Each one wanted to be the winner, that bit is reasonable, but when in his joy and jubilation Kaiser Wilhelm got excited and said “I am the Winner!” King Edward did not play well, he thumped him in the face and floored him to the ground.  Many similar encounters made the Kaiser think that perhaps he was not good enough and that he had to prove himself all the more, Britain was The Superpower in the World at that time, they had a massive Navy.  The Kaiser started to build up the Navy of Germany in order to gain respect for him and his land.

In addition to all of this All the Royal Families of Europe gathered in Denmark every Summer.  The reason they chose Denmark was that this was where the King’s wife Alexandra had come from.  When I say All it was all apart from the Kaiser’s family, the German part of their family – they were all related – was not invited.  So they did not play well here.  This must have really upset Princess Victoria and her son Kaiser Wilhelm.  Discriminated against for being born a girl and disabled, cruel and unkind.

This was all before Lego had been invented.  Lego is Danish.  It comes from the Danish words  leg godt which means play well.  The company commenced in 1932 after the First World War.  The Lego brick was launched in 1958 after the Second.

https://www.lego.com/en-us/aboutus/lego-group/the-lego-group-history

In 1949 A Briton, Hilary Fisher Page, and his company Kiddicraft has invented the plastic bricks that Ole Kirk and his son Godtfred are presented with. In the late 1950s, the LEGO Group contacts Kiddicraft to ask whether they object to the LEGO® brick. They do not. On the contrary, they wish the company good luck with the bricks, as they have not enjoyed much success with their product. In 1981, the LEGO Group purchases the rights to the Kiddicraft bricks and trademark from the descendants of Hilary Fisher Page.

https://www.lego.com/en-gb/history/articles/c-automatic-binding-bricks

LEGO 4 DOT SQUARE BLOCK:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

FOOTBALL PITCH BASEPLATE:

 

 

 

This is a football pitch, and the idea I’m pitching it that instead of fighting with weapons  – which is not entertaining to spectators, in fact it is quite dangerous   –- we win with sport  – this would be more constructive.  People have always preferred playing football to archery practice just in case an enemy entered the land, football was banned a long time ago and people were forced by law to practice archery every Sunday after Church. “You’ll have someone’s eye out with that!”

BATTLE OF HASTINGS:

They were not at all happy about this.  They would have far rather played with who the elites said were their enemies, after all from what the elites did to them, ruining their Sundays they reckoned that the enemies were a lot better and from all this they liked the thought of playing with them a lot.  One example, on Christmas Day in Trenchland of World War One is where the Germans and the English decided they’d have enough of the game of soldiers and wanted to give it a break and play football with each other instead.  They were very happy, had a great time, and got on with each other as though they were all on the same team with the same goal in mind.  They did not want to go back to fighting the war.  I do not know the results of that game, but suffice to say we enjoy playing each other to this day.

WORLD WAR ONE MEN PLAYING FOOTBALL:

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/ww1-soccer-photos

So what I’d do it divide the disputed ground up into foot squares.  A foot is 12 inches or 30cm.  If you win a match that land area is yours.  This is a bit like gaining ground pixel by pixel.  Clearly the other team can also gain ground too.  Then they may play for your ground.  This could go on for a long time, and at the end of the day and most probably the middle and the beginning too you’d all become great mates and go to the pub and drink to your friendships, continue to get on and prosper in unity.  Worth a try!?  Rugby and other sports can be played too so no-one feels left out, wouldn’t want that to happen again would we, we definitely know the result of leaving people out.

A less risky risk.

MAP IN SQUARES:

Taking sides is sometimes a bad thing, and it is sometimes a good thing.  Sometimes being on side or off side is a tediously complex thing, people say.  They may not be looking at it the right way.  It is really very basic.  As basic as a Key Words Reading Scheme Book where: Jane has the ball.  Peter sees the ball.  and   Pat wants the ball.  You know the word s-i-d-e side.  The new word I wish to introduce is the word e-n-d  end.  I also wish to introduce the words on and off.

Pitch from:

https://pixabay.com/vectors/field-football-pitch-soccer-sport-2023250/

COREL DRAW IMAGE:

(You can add a ball on the side line – that is on side and another that is not – that is off side.  Use anything round you have to hand for a ball.)

Okay so when they say, and discuss at unnecessary length that the ball is off side when it is still on the pitch that is inaccurate.  There is no need for VAR for this.  Also if the off side rule is to apply here it would have to go off the sides not the ends for that to additionally apply.  As it does not all their weird waffle is irrelevant and pretty boring – play on is what I say and get more goals that is the goal of the game I would have thought.  And I would like to see more goals, a goalless game is a pointless exercise in my book.  I like loads of goals.  They are fun.  We like fun.  Jane likes fun.  Peter likes fun.  Pat the dog likes fun too.  Pat the dog likes balls and he likes to play with balls in the park.  It is fun to play with balls in the park.


MULTICOURT

CASUAL FOOTBALL PITCH:

This is another idea I have had in my mind for years:

Looking at the League it takes many years to go up and down it, I’m more concerned with the lack of ability to rise up it fast – your team is trapped by the Divisions – you can only go so far in a year.  Then there is the chasmic gap of wealth so even if you go up you’re struggling like a child moved up a set in class where everything is so different, the learning styles, the speed, the fact that those already there are totally with it as they learned all the supporting stuff in their brains whilst you were doing boring slower work in a different way in a lower set.  A more incremental change would be preferrable and an evening out of the vast inequalities with the constant possibility of rising coupled with a lesser devastation of going down.  Going down a Division does feel like a criminal sentence and you feel you’ve let yourself down, you’ve let your team down, you’ve let your town down, it is an all time low.  There really is no need for this sort of stuff.  This is not fun.

What I would do is have One Unitary League with all teams from all sorts of backgrounds, ages, genders and abilities could play in.  Obviously there will need to be parameters to ensure safe play, so you have rules on manner of play say when there are young men at full strength on one team and women or kids or walking footballers at the other end of the age range on the other team.  Clearly close tackle contact is not permissible – a bit like tag rugby being better and wearing of helmets as it is a seriously dangerous game – so instead you go for stricter time limits on having the ball, not even allowing dribbling by one person for long, passing gives opportunities for the other team to fairly take possession.  It’ll be a different kind of game with players being required to stay 1 metre plus away – to help the referees something that lights up could be worn by players to warn them when they are getting too close and flash when boundaries have been breached.

Player numbers on the pitch is something I’d give a variable to too.  Players can be individually rated.  Peak fitness young men would have the highest rating and would play with 12 players on the pitch.  Ratings would include leg length as one example.  The others are more obvious like muscle amounts, heart fitness, bone mass, age – both ends as the bone type of the young is weak and in the old brittle and unmendable and other medical attributes and disabilities – you’d want to keep running blades well away from other players!  There could be roller chair football Rollerball with a kicker at the front, a bit like Subbuteo for real!  To preserve the pitch instead of wheels they could roll on balls a bit like Dyson’s Ballbarrow, but more manoeuvrable like BB-8  in Star Wars.   I can see a design in my mind.

IMAGES OF THEM:

Walking footballers would need loads on the pitch for a full size pitch so their game would be mainly passing to each other.  Little kids too, they can run and run but little legs are not long and are growing so they need to be taken care of.

Pitch size can be edited for this, so if you were playing with peak men at 12 to a full size pitch their numbers would need to be reduced, say 5 to a side.

So you may have 24 walking footballers on one side and 12 peak men on the other, on a full sized pitch.

Pitches could be placed anywhere, from school astroturf to a muddy field in the country, this makes this more inclusive cost wise, obviously you are also going to include current and historic league pitches like Accrington Stanley and the Mega Premier League ones at Man United.  Everyone can dream of playing at Wembley with a much more realistic possibility of that dream actually coming true.

Pitches did used to be muddy:

MUDDY FOOTBALL PITCHES:

They survived!

Pitches are also on Astro-turf, Clay, Sand, Gravel, Wood, Rubber, Tarmac and combinations – a bit like tennis really.

The way the Uni-League would work is you’d put all the teams on it in their current end of season league position.

Then you would merge all of that together.

That would be the starting positions of all the teams.

Then instead of playing hither and thither and only with a limited number of teams you would play with the teams adjacent to you in the Uni League.

There would be alternate defence and attack weeks.

You would always defend away so that it is easiest and cheapest for your fans to see new teams and you winning your way up potentially at your home grounds, so the attack would be there, and if you lost your defensive position it would be less of a home humiliation.

I’ll name the teams after letters of the alphabet to make this clearer – it is certainly easier to understand than the current system!

A

B

C

D

E

F

Week 1 Defend for A C and E  Attack for B D and F …

A loses B wins   C wins D loses E loses F wins :

B

A

C

D

F

E

So the movement is immediate.

Each team alternates attacking and defending games.  That gives them the next team to beat.  So you aim up the league to attack and down to defend.   You will build relationships with close teams until one of you goes one way and the other another.  There will be weeks when the top team of the League does not play.  But this will be helped by 1) the fact that further up Continental teams can be added and then Worldwide, so International standard players can be always playing international games which will be more stretching and fulfilling for them. And 2) part of this system rewards you for up to 12 teams you have been in and have won a higher position for when you were playing for them.  A player in one team need not accept being on the bench for that team, instead they could go and play for one of their other teams they carried onward that week, to help them further along in their journey upwards.  So International players will have game control and get to choose what they do that week, an overstocked team is a frustration for a dedicated player who just wants to play football not just sit there gawping thinking let me on let me on I could do a better job than that *** on the pitch right now et cetera…

The carrying upwards is a royalty players can be paid – so less of a mega deal by agents and more based simply on results on the pitch, fairer and squarer, equal rewards for all, and no silly sums a young one couldn’t handle – larger sums could be proscribed to be put in trust for younger players to ensure secure futures for them.  Every team player gets the same. That Match players get a fixed amount for a win and a compensation for a lose too.

So you started in a school team, it is going up but as it is lower down the league it gets a small amount, pocket money perhaps, 50% can go to kit and grounds, but 50% must go to those who played, so this is your team 1.  Your team 2 and 3 are your secondary and college teams, they earn you progressively more in Carrying Upwards Royalties, but you still need to work at the moment to pay your way.  Next you apply for your first adult team telling them how good you’ve been and you’ll do them proud, they say Yes to you joining, this is your team 4.  They do well and start to go further up with you on the pitch.  Another team you play pitches for you to play with them and you think that this is an exciting prospect and join them, this is your team 5, you continue going up. Teams 6 7 and 8 are further up the league.  You get asked to help out for your team 4 as a couple of their players are ill, you ask your team 8 if they can spare you, they can and you go and catch up with your mates there and play with them and for them again that week.  9 and on lead you up to International level so you move around more, sometimes there is an international game on, though you do have free weeks, so you keep your other teams rising as much as you are free to do so.

There will be many more Internationals – no more waiting for four years for the next chance, so few opportunities for top players right now, it would be exciting to see world class players playing each other many more times.  That is also the goal of this set up.

The Carrying Upwards Royalty amount for each of your teams will be their position in the league that week, and this will be automatically in your account there and then, happy days.

The good thing about this is that you can join retiring from peak teams as you age and still be in it to win it.  You could possibly get a Carrying pension of 10% for all your teams once you stop playing.

There could be a little league for little ones not able to do the full 90 minutes – they could not do this within the main Uni-League as that would not be fair on all the other participants – this could also be local so that this stage is not too over-whelming for them.  On a small pitch with a small, say six, on the team, so that there is not too much to deal with and be aware of too soon, so they enjoy the play without the pressure, fun for the little ones.

That’s how I’d line the league up!

It’s like the FA Cup of possibility in a permanent structure and the Leagues without the bad luck play-offs where you do so well but don’t quite make it.  It means that every match matters and teams don’t take years getting from one league to another in a stuck in the mud way.  It also means an evening out of the money, in many cases a rising team cannot hack it when it goes up a step in the leagues because the money the other teams have had means they are at an unfair disadvantage, and this is not money by the players all the time.  There does need to be hope.

In the current National League there are 3 Divisions, National, and below that equally North and South.  This is a recognition of the fact that there is less money to travel with at this level.  I would do something similar based on where your team is, going further at the top and nearer at the bottom, to regional, your own personal region which your location would be placed at the centre of with the distances based on the transport network from your site.

You will see your position in the Uni League and using your distance to travel requirement will see who have next got to play.  Bearing in mind we’ve got computers now it is not getting a map out, the computer will tell you.  The App will give you many moves in advance like a Chess programme, of who you will play if you win and lose.

What will happen is you will see that as there are lots of teams, perhaps across the world, you will not have to travel that far, unless you are at the top of the Uni League, so you will play Attack and Defend games with teams many places above and below your position.  The result will be a straight swap, it would seem sad to go so far down when you lose, though going up far would be fun.  If your team could play another team but chose not to, at any level, you would forgo your position and swap it with the lower team you could have played, if you were playing at Attack game to go up your next Defence team would be chosen for this swap.  If there is bad weather then the travel distances required would adjust reasonably, and this could be very local, and at all levels, so little local teams may play big ones these weeks, which would be amazing.

I’ve always thought penalties were rather unfair and unsuitable for a team game, this is not singles at Wimbledon but football at Wembley.  There are better deciders.  Like coloured cards your team members get.  They could act as a goal deducter.  Certainly add them up and if at full time the score’s even take these into account and the best behaved team is the winner!  In games where technology is available and all being equal at this point then attempts on goal could be counted, then team possession, more possession more control of the game, will win at this point, that’ll end it there.  With this still being equal or no tech available, the attempts on goal is a possibility as these could be agreed to and added up as the game progresses, then a team test of running fastest around and or across the pitch, fastest team all in wins, and team goal scoring from a certain point if all else fails, say from the centre point in threes so no one individual is seen to be at fault – I’ve never felt that was fair, in particular in Nationally televised games – it is like being put in the stocks having all sorts of muck thrown at you, worldwide:

PICTURE OF STOCKS:

WITH SOMEONE IN THEM:

 

3 WORLDS IN A ROW LIKE THE HOLES IN STOCKS:

 

Goals rather than gaols – the old spelling of jails

Now onto the coloured cards:.

We have the Yellow one

And we have the Red one

We know roughly what these are for

We also see players acting like they are dying when a blade of grass has scratched their little finger, and they writhe in agony all curled up like a caterpillar under attack.  It is all so melodramatic.  And all so fake.  Ham acting on your ham string being pulled.  Pull the other one mate, I’m not falling for it!

There is a card for acting, an actors’ card called the Equity Card, which you can get if you act professionally.  It is called a Green Card.

I think when players play up in this manner they should be shown the Green Card.  This will keep both the Scene and the Act length to a minimum and the Play can play on!  Referees could show this from a distance to show he or she knows what you are playing at and that they are fully aware that you are acting up.  In many ways this behaviour is not fair play, it is dishonesty, trickery, not plausible nor acceptable.

People can get very bored and the game can get a bit depressing to view when you pay good money to see it, or waste your time on the side lines as a spectator, it starts to feel like you’re wasting your life, when the players do what you could do in your own free time for free in the park, a kickabout   Elton John might sing “I guess that’s why they call it the blues”  It certainly gives you the blues.  So when players aren’t really playing for real, and I’m not interested if they think we’ve won now and the other team rolls over and takes it giving up, I’d give the offending half of the pitch a blue card, or all of it, or if it is just one or two players just them.

With this new Uni-League cards will deduct cumulated goals so they will really matter, as follows:

Red Card  4 goals

Yellow 3 goals

Green 2 goals

Blue 1 goal

So – bearing in mind that I think the offside rule should go, because it makes no sense – more goals will be scored, but more can be lost with bad behaviour.  Good conduct was always the core aim of the game at the inception of the Rules based game, rules drawn up by the Football Association, hence the name Soccer for it too.

Before that there was what I jokingly call “Original Rules Football” there were no rules then, anything goes was the disorder of the day.  Villages played and all you had to do is score 1 goal at one end of the village and get the ball there in whatever way you had in mind and body including unruly rugby scrums – batten down the hatches and board up the windows, they were bound to trash the place.  This was a part of the reason it was banned in places.  This plays out now in riots away from the pitch.

REFERENCE TO OLD FOOTBALL – ONE OF MANY LINKS TO IT :

https://www.football-stadiums.co.uk/articles/folk-football/

The way I’d sort out the riots is to ban that team playing with this Uni-League so that they would go down.  This could be for a certain time, serving a sentence.  In the current system I’d ban all spectators and television and close the team shop so they’d lose revenue from it, so that it would not pay.  I suppose spectators of teams who thought they were being ripped off might try this on, but if they had voiced a grievance it is worth listening to it, and reasoning reasonably if that grief is not founded.  This will certainly save on Policing, Policing only makes attendees feel like they’re special, VIPs and the like, turns them on, excites them, it must be that important. It is also a cost to the local community, this is both paid for by Council Tax Payers, the Police precept goes up 5% every year, it means Police shifts are used up in this, it also influences them to think of these men more important than women being hurt by men, they do not have time left to help these women.  To simmer it down it is best to not ratchet it up and to call a silence for calm contemplation.  Obviously where this has been provoked by external forces then that is extremely serious and needs to be accounted for and the spectators are blameless.

That is the stick this is the carrot:

With this Uni-League some of the teams playing for places could be fan teams – and they could call themselves as such, a calling to make their mega team the best overall including fan teams.  Those who do this or who are actively involved in some other sport could be offered the best front row seats at matches so that they conduct the conduct at the match.  Then the distracting fluorescent bright clothed could melt away and civilised treatment of all as respected and respectable spectators relax and enjoy the game feeling human and fully welcome again.

Hopefully all will more actively participate and more will play the game this way and the globe will be a more positive place.  That is my goal here.

BECKHAM ACADEMY:

 

 

 

 

Another way that more people can play is if very rich footballers bought up land that would otherwise be used for development, building yet more housing housing housing and yet more boring housing.  They do talk about doing good, every Sunday’s Match of the Day covers an element of this from the Premier League, but yet only one footballer, David Beckham, with his Academy, had put his name to this, but this has now closed and it is yet more boring housing.  It’s like not one of them cares if we are fat or fit.  It is quite simple, see some land up for sale, buy it, name the field after yourself e.g Gary’s Line Acre, that sort of thing, whatever you fancy, your name will go down in history in perpetuity, and stipulate in legal documents and in your will, if that is what will work, to make sure that this land is to be used for the purpose of playing football, sorted, instantaneously more sports facilities for all.  You could form ‘stadium’ seating out of swings so you exercise when you watch football, it would be fun to kick it back swinging low and high on your sweet chariot coming for to carry the cup home.

That’s it, that’s what it’s all about really.

My photos with me on the ball and with the ball at my home again (second half) :

PHOTOS

Leave it out:

You’ve got a yellow card:

You have now got a red to add to that:

Singing from the sidelines:

Goal saved and deflected:

Start of the game:

I declare you the Winner: