Michael Bérubé on how to perfect soccer:
I have long thought that soccer– known in some parts of the world, namely, everywhere but here, as “football”– is almost the perfect sport. It involves intense, explosive large-muscle-group strength, incredible cardiovascular stamina, and stunning small-muscle-group finesse and coordination. It also has nearly-ideal combinations of individual virtuosity with team effort, skill with chance, and synoptic strategy with sudden bursts of impromptu brilliance. But unfortunately, the sport has deep structural flaws, the most notorious of which is its “offsides” rule, which prevents players from sprinting behind defenses. And don’t even try to defend the inane “shootout” as a means of deciding games: at the very least, the players should run in from midfield and/or shoot from outside the penalty area. Shooting from 11m out is a joke. The main problem, though, is that the scale of soccer is too big. The way I figure it, if soccer would just reduce the size of its field, reduce the number of players on the field, make the ball smaller and harder and flatten it on both ends, make the goal smaller, put up boards and glass around the boundaries, cover the field in ice, and give everybody sticks, then you’d have the perfect sport.