Click here to order Reffing Hell: Stuck In The Middle Of A Game Gone Wrong by Ian Plenderleith (Halcyon Publishing), published on August 8, 2022.
Can you imagine football without offside? 11 Freunde magazine was so inspired by a rant on TV from actor Til Schweiger about
the need to abolish Law 11 that it turned theory into practice. It staged a
60-minute game between two Berlin Oberliga (fifth tier) sides to see if the game
would really be as exciting as some people suppose.
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The game is described in its latest issue
(#180), outlining the presumptions beforehand. Abolishing offside would 1. Give
players more space. 2. Encourage wing play, as happened when field hockey
abolished the rule in 1998. 3. Teams would be prompted to give up the midfield.
4. There would be more shots and goals and 5. The game would go nuts! One
interested observer was the manager of second division Union Berlin, Helmut
Schulte, who criticised what he called the "crush football"
of the modern game - characterised in his view by too many tight midfield
battles.
