Ranking Arsene Wenger’s six maddest ideas to revolutionise football: Offsides, World Cup… | OneFootball

Arsene Wenger is one of the best football managers of all time, but since retiring from management, he’s cooked up some pretty radical ideas.

It’s safe to say that some of his takes have been greeted better than others by the general public, although they’ve definitely got people talking.

We’ve ranked Wenger’s six most bonkers ideas from moderate to utterly insane.

6. Condense international qualifying matches

This idea has already been incorporated by FIFA and for good reason.

Back in 2019, Wenger argued that there should be fewer international breaks during the regular season and that qualifying for major tournaments should be done over one or two extended international breaks.

From September this year, FIFA have introduced a new three-week international break where countries will play four international matches instead of two.

The international fixture list still isn’t as condensed as Wenger would like, but FIFA do seem to be following his blueprint.

“I believe it’s needed, with the physical resources that the players need today, it’s important that you have four weeks holiday,” Wenger said.

“I would say that’s one of the solutions we will discuss is to compact the qualifiers.

“Instead of going away in September, October, November, March and June, we regroup the qualifiers all in one month or two quadruples in October and in February.

“At least the players can dedicate that time to the club from March until June, and we would gain four dates.”

5. DIY free kicks

As per the current rules, the taker of a free-kick isn’t allowed to touch the ball again until somebody else has, be it a teammate or an opponent.

Wenger would like to abolish that rule and allow the taker to dribble the ball straight from the free-kick position.

He’s argued that this rule change would speed up play and honestly, we’d be open to it.

4. Daylight offside rule

According to reports, FIFA have opened the door to implementing Wenger’s offside rule.

The rule change would mean that an attacker is only offside if they have completely passed the last defender and there is ‘daylight’ between the players.

This would obviously benefit the forward – these forwards especially – and would likely see games become higher scoring, which we’d love to see.

However, the main gripe that people currently have with the offside rule is those close call decisions where someone is flagged offside for their toenail being a centimetre out of place.

While Wenger’s new rule sounds good in theory, it would simply move the line further forward and wouldn’t get rid of those close calls that everyone collectively hates.

Still, it’s not his worst idea.

3. Corners are allowed to go out of play

Rewarding a corner taker who can’t keep the ball in play? Utter woke nonsense.

“We are also considering other things: a corner that goes out of play and comes back in could be made valid, this would create new goal-scoring opportunities,” Wenger argued.

Imagine the damage that Mikel Arteta and Arsenal would do if this law got passed. It’s a hard no from us.

2. Kick-ins replace throw-ins

Don’t let Tony Pulis know about this one.

Wenger has dug into the data and suggested that throw-ins don’t represent an advantage to the attacking side, so would like to see them replaced with kick-ins.

“I would also like to change the throw-in rule: five minutes before the end, a throw-in for you should be an advantage, but in these situations you are facing 10 outfield players in play, whilst you only have nine.

“Stats show that in eight out of 10 of those throw-in situations, you lose the ball.”

The problem with this change is that a kick-in would become almost the equivalent of a corner, which would totally disrupt the overall flow of a game.

1. World Cup every two years

The World Cup is the pinnacle of football and that’s largely because of its scarcity.

The competition has already been watered down by expanding it to 48 teams, we simply don’t see the need to play it every two years.

“If you look at the teams in the World Cups usually the average age is 27 or 28,” Wenger told beIN Sports in 2019.

“Because the World Cup is every four years there are very few chances to win it again because when they go back to the next World Cup they are 32 or 33.

“That’s why maybe we should organise the World Cup every two years.”

For many, the beauty of the World Cup is that most players will only ever get two or three chances to win it and by increasing the frequency of the tournament, you’d be watering down the trophy and it’s prestige.

This one can’t be allowed to happen, as much as FIFA would want it.