NY Times and the 30-year anniversary of the backpass law introduction

[Ponietz]

Last edited Sat Dec 2, 2023, 07:57 PM - Edit history (2)

[link:https://theathletic.com/3397785/2022/07/20/thirty-years-of-the-backpass-rule

This summer marks the 30th anniversary of the backpass law being introduced, following FIFA’s successful experiment in Italy a year earlier. It is arguably the most significant — and the best — rule change in the modern game. The mindnumbing sight of goalkeepers rolling the ball out to defenders, receiving it back, picking it up and holding it in their hands to kill games, was gone.

Trawling back through footage of Graeme Souness’ 70-yard backpass for Rangers against Dynamo Kyiv in 1987, or Peter Schmeichel and the Denmark defenders running the clock down in the 1992 European Championship final against Germany, is a bizarre experience, not least because you wonder how that kind of thing, which everyone in the game was doing, had been tolerated for so long.

“If I watch games from that time — I don’t want to lose respect for the players who played then, I had my idols — but today I can’t watch this anymore, especially the view from the goalkeeper,” Pascal Zuberbuhler, the former Switzerland goalkeeper and FIFA’s senior football expert, tells The Athletic. “I was excited at that time, ‘Oh, great football game’. Backpass. In the hands. Rolling out. Backpass. In the hands. Today, I can’t see this. It’s crazy.”

Back in 1992, the main reason for introducing the backpass law was to reduce the amount of timewasting to make football more entertaining. Thirty years later, timewasting still exists in one form or another and probably always will, but even the backpass-law sceptics — and there were plenty of those at the time — accept that the game has benefitted hugely from the change.

(Amidst the quotidian posts of The NY Times’ errors, euphemisms, misnomers, omissions, and outright lies)
I add a perspective to this piece.

In the latter 80’s virtually every world soccer fan knew of René Higuita, “El Loco”, Columbia’s electric, offensive-minded GK. Owners and coaches worldwide saw the potential in having a GK with ball skills and focused on it. Also, indoor soccer in the US during the 80’s already required GK’s to play with their feet, and every indoor soccer player I ever met was just biding time until the weather was nice enough to play outdoors. The spirit of the game had already changed by ‘92 — High School, youth, and Sunday city league teams had adept, ball-playing GKs.

FIFA had already instituted rule changes, twice, to cut the shenanigans; first, by prohibiting the GK from running in her box with ball in hand. This necessitated a second attempt — by not allowing the GK to pick the ball up twice without it being touched by another player. By ‘92, skilled GKs the world over made a joke of even the modified rules.

So the current rule was FIFA’s third effort to remedy the absurdities created by the Higuita revolution. As far as I’m concerned it’s the Higuita rule.

The Times omitted the most salient facts.

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