40 ways to improve football

Right you lot. Inspired by 11 Freunde magazine, I've thought up a few ways to improve football. Agree? Disagree? Let me know! And feel free to add some more suggestions in the comments.

Spoiler: lots of things are going to be banned

1. Ban VAR. For better or worse, let referees decide on things instead of spending half of our matchdays staring at a monitor. We spend enough of our lives looking at screens as it is.

2. Let's have some common sense in offside decisions. No, a player isn't gaining an unfair advantage if their elbow is a centimetre past the last defender. He's not allowed to touch the ball with his elbow for heaven's sake.

3. Merge the Premier League and Football League. For the name of the new organisation, take the “Football” from Football League and “League” from Premier League. The new organisation shall not use a logo that looks like a washing machine brand.

4. The four divisions of the new “Football League” shall be named division 1, 2, 3 and 4. There shall be neither “championships”, nor any “super” or “premier” leagues.

5. All TV money shall be distributed equally between every League club, whether Manchester United or Stevenage Borough.

6. Stevenage Borough shall actually be called Stevenage Borough, not Stevenage FC.

7. Luton Town shall decide what colours to play in. I don't care whether you play in white and black, white and blue, orange and white or orange and blue. You've existed for 135 years, so make your minds up!

8. Alan Hardy shall be installed as the chairman of Nottingham Forest with immediate effect.

9. Football matches shall never start earlier than 3.00 pm.

10. All new football stadia shall have proper, towering floodlights built on acres of scaffolding.
    

11. Ban music after goals. If we can't make noise after scoring a goal, we might as well just stay at home.

12. Each stadium shall have a designated sniper, who will shoot the stadium announcer with a tranquilliser dart if the latter becomes too excitable or attempts to “animate” the crowd.

13. If, during World Cup matches, a fan shown on the big screen immediately starts smiling and waving, this fan will also be shot with a tranquilliser dart.

14. If the behaviour in 13 persists, big screens shall be removed from football stadia.

15. In fact, remove the big screens anyway.

16. Notts County shall never play in white shorts at home, and the black and white stripes shall also be visible on the back of the shirt.

17. Only flamboyant Latin American stars and tricky wingers with their socks rolled down are allowed to wear coloured boots. Everyone else wears black.

18. Referees must all be over 40, balding and with pot bellies that wobble as they run. They must all be schoolteachers.

19. MK Dons shall be stripped of the “Dons” name and relegated to the lowest rung of non-league, so they can earn their League place like everyone else.

20. Beer can be consumed in the stands, instead of having to neck it in the concourse.

21. Football managers are allowed to be fat again.

22. Chairmen should be local barons of industry with a comb-over.

23. All interviews that begin “Well, at the end of the day...” shall be cut off immediately.

24. Players whipping off their shirts and jumping into the crowd after scoring shall no longer be given a yellow card, but actively encouraged (but only in the last ten minutes of play).

25. Players who gloat to opposition fans after going 2-0 up shall be tolerated, but only on the condition that they are still on the pitch when their side loses 3-2.

26. No more postponements, ever. If players slip around on the ice, or are completely submerged in the mud, or are struck by lightning, that just adds to the spectacle.
    

27. Any mention of the acronyms “EPL” or “EFL” shall be an offence punishable with a season ticket at Mansfield Town.

28. The Champions League shall be for champions only. Teams that finish fourth need not apply.

29. Rochdale play in the fourth division. Sorry Dale, but it's called the Rochdale division for a reason.

30. “Premier League records” are not a thing. The many records from our rich football history shall not be disregarded because they happened before a bunch of greedy first division chairmen decided to keep all the TV money for themselves.

31. All journalists who use the phrase “what Pele called the beautiful game...” shall be sent to a rough Mansfield pub in a Chesterfield shirt to learn the error of their ways.

32. A minimum of three teams shall be promoted from the National League to the Football League every season. The lack of promotion places from the National League is a relic of the strict separation of the League and non-league up to the 1980s and needs to be corrected.

33. The National League shall be given a new name. Don't care what. National League sounds a bit too much like an underground neo-nazi cell for my liking.

34. Betting companies, online casinos and all the rest of them have no place cluttering up our beautiful football shirts.

35. Bring back standing.

36. And cheaper prices for standing.

37. Please let us have no more soulless new stadiums next to a motorway junction and Tesco's surrounded by zillions of parking spaces and Pizza Huts but with no pubs or anything approaching character.

38. No stadium sponsors. Or, if they HAVE to be sponsored, they should at least be accompanied by the name of the actual stadium. Too many grounds are identified solely by a changing sponsor's name.

39. Imprisonment for the “band” that plays at England games. Preferably in a dank medieval dungeon.

40. Last, but most definitely not least: racism shall never, ever be tolerated and shall be punished with a life ban.