Five Reasons Modern Football is Rubbish

It’s Christmas Eve and in the drunk tank an old man is saying…

“Modern football is rubbish.”

Yep, I’m going full on Grinch with this latest blog (some would argue that’s nothing new given my Celtic related blogs this season) so grab some hot chocolate, throw another log on the open fire, and gather round as the grumpy old man tells you all how it was better in his day. Humbug.

Joking aside, I don’t think I’m going to say anything controversial here. I’m sure many will agree with me. But regardless, I’m going to go into detail on just five things that really bug me about today’s game. There’s probably more, but these are the five that I would love to see dealt with. Not that I think for a moment any of them will be, I’m pretty sure none of them will but you live in hope of at least one, but I’m going to have a good old rant anyway. Rants are cathartic after all.

So here we go with five reasons that modern football is rubbish.

1. MONEY

Let’s face it, this could very well be all five entries on this list. Money has, without a doubt, ruined football.

Teams from smaller leagues can’t compete with teams from bigger leagues in Europe – there is NO chance anyone from Scotland is winning the Champions League. Dundee United will remain the last team to even get to the semi final of the old European Cup back in 1984 forevermore, no one is getting that close again from Scotland.

On top of that, teams in Scotland can’t compete with Celtic and Rangers.

Now, it seems odd to be saying that right now with Hearts top of the league having beaten both of them home and away, but even Hearts fans will agree that has just as much to do with both Celtic and Rangers in self-destruct mode this season as it does with Hearts having a brilliant and crucially consistent season in the league. If that weren’t the case, Hearts fans would probably be convinced they’re going to win the league this season, rather than disappointingly expecting Celtic and Rangers to sort themselves out in January and hunt them down to the point that normal service is resumed as it has been for more than forty years now.

Away from the clubs themselves, the cost of going to football for fans is extortionate. Whether that’s charging nearly £40 a head to go to Celtic Park or Ibrox, charging similar prices to go see Scotland play in qualifying games against less glamorous countries, or the teams in lower leagues charging over £20 at times these days… and that’s before you even factor in travel costs to and from games. Buses aren’t cheap, trains are even worse.

Throw in the cost of a replica shirt now upwards of £70 each – it’s a jumped up t-shirt people! – and the sheer number of kits that come out, not to mention training gear and all the other merchandise that gets churned out on an annual basis (or apparently monthly if you’re Adidas and Celtic) and I’m actually kinda glad neither of my kids are that bothered about football because I’d need another mortgage at this point to keep up.

And that’s without even touching on operation ripoff that is in full swing through FIFA and their affiliates for next year’s World Cup in North America. They’ve taken football greed to all new heights with what amounts to record breaking expensive tickets all the way through to the legalised ticket touting that is their resale platform.

Which is saying something as FIFA have been fleecing us for a long time now, but this World Cup in particular is eye-watering stuff.

Sadly, this ship seems to have long since sailed. Prices never come down, and those setting them will argue they are selling so why should they (ignoring the fact they sell because football is a captive audience and people don’t shop around other teams for better deals like other businesses). The big leagues will never want to make better competition and will instead continue to strive to stay out in front. Money has ruined football and that’s never coming back.

Sadly, even the lower leagues suffer from it. You only have to look at teams like East Kilbride or Darvel or Johnstone Burgh who throw money about in an effort to catapult themselves up the divisions. Gretna clearly wasn’t a big enough warning.

2. VAR

I didn’t celebrate Lawrence Shankland’s goal for Scotland against Denmark last month, at least not right away. The ball went in the net, I wasn’t sure if there was a touch on it or not, and all I could see was a group of Denmark players adamant that something was wrong with the goal. I expected it to be ruled out based on their reaction. So I stood there and watched what the referee was doing.

I’ve obviously since watched it back MANY TIMES (haven’t we all) and there is absolutely nothing wrong with it. The only contact is when Schmeichel gives Shankland a wee push to try and get him to head out like every other player did which has no effect whatsoever and Shankland’s touch puts it in the net. VAR looked at it, correctly saw nothing wrong, and the goal was eventually confirmed as good with the referee pointing to the centre spot.

And only then did I celebrate.

VAR takes time, and it sucks the fun out of the moment. I had the same thought when McTominay scored his opener, maybe he’ll be penalised for his boot being too high (he did set a record height for that overhead kick after all) but as none of the Denmark players were protesting that particular moment I quickly buried that thought – but still looked to the referee at some point during that just to be sure!

I do appreciate that, when VAR is used properly, it gets things correct. That Shankland goal was checked and Denmark’s protests were about nothing. Denmark got a penalty earlier on thanks to VAR checking where the foul was – inside or outside of the box. You think back to the Israel game in 2021 when the referee initially ruled out the Lyndon Dykes goal but VAR correctly changed that to be legitimate and it’s moments like that where you see there is a benefit to it.

I could probably live with the doubt like I had over Shankland’s goal if I had any faith in the people using VAR. But I’ve seen too many decisions where VAR has got involved and you wonder what on Earth the officials using it are doing. St Mirren had a perfectly good goal chopped off at the weekend against Livingston, and not for the first time this season have the Buddies been screwed over by it. I heard on the radio that St Mirren and Kilmarnock are the two teams most affected by bad VAR decisions, and when you consider the latter recently sacked their manager then you see there are consequences to these decisions.

There’s a total lack of consistency when applying the rules as well. A hand ball one week isn’t a hand ball the next. Offside decisions now come down to a bawhair, something that needs freeze frame and straight lines drawn to decide. When it’s at that point, the benefit should go to the attacker because we’ve seen decisions where the wrong frame is used, or we’ve had terrible angles to try and tell if they are or aren’t offside. You don’t even need the Wenger daylight rule for this, if it’s that close you call it level and leave it at that. The linesmen can’t see it in real time but more importantly the players themselves can’t tell to the degree you’re going to so why even bother? The spirit of offside is to stop poaching, not to make sure you cut your toenails before you set foot on the pitch!

Then there’s the decisions that take minutes to decide. If a decision is taking minutes, it’s not a clear and obvious error and the on field decision should stand. Again, simple, stick a time limit on VAR and it’ll improve things massively.

So the problem with VAR is two fold – and if I’m being fair then strictly speaking the problem isn’t that using technology to get decisions correct is bad. Firstly the fan enjoyment is something we have to live with if we’re to use it at all, but a time limit would at least limit that issue a bit. Secondly, the other problem with VAR is the same problem we’ve always had – the incompetence of those using it. Wilie Collum’s half hour YouTube show is all very good and well but we’re not seeing any improvement and those making the mistakes are there again the following week. But we could help them out a bit by at least simplifying the rules for all.

It was bad enough when our officials were making mistakes in the heat of the moment. Now our officials are making mistakes despite being able to stop the game, rewatch it, and literally take minutes to still get the decision wrong. That’s some going!

3. TOO MANY SUBS

I first took an interest in football in an era of two subs for entire the game. I’m aware enough to know that even back in the 60s there wasn’t really any subs, although they came in as a thing in the late 50s. The Lisbon Lions had an unused substitute goalkeeper in John Fallon for the final and that was it, for example. But then we went to three subs in the 90s and when Covid hit we suddenly jumped up even further to five subs across three substitution periods. That was meant to be temporary, but it stuck.

I hate it.

Then if it’s a cup game the teams get to use yet another sub in extra time, so by that point you could have changed more than half the team! It’s gone too far!

This might be going back to the money point, but it favours those with bigger and better squads. This rule change has made it even more difficult for smaller clubs to beat bigger clubs. If your three £10m signings are having a stinker, that used to be great for the opposition. Now, you can just bring on your three £6m signings to replace them, knowing you’ve still got two more subs in case of injury! Meanwhile, you have the other team hoping their £1m star man that they broke the bank to get doesn’t pick up a knock or they’ve no chance of nicking something!

The other thing we’ve lost in all of this is the classic outfield player in goal. That was far more common when I was younger because you rarely had a goalkeeper on the bench. The bench was limited to just a couple of players and you wanted to be able to change the game later on so you gambled nothing would happen to your goalkeeper. Remember Jim Leighton in the 2000 Scottish Cup final? That was the last time you could only name three subs. Rangers didn’t have a sub goalie that day either, but both Celtic and Hibernian had one the following year when five subs could be named.

It’s not that it doesn’t happen now. You can still use all your subs and then have to put someone in goal. Or you might even have your sub goalie injured and have to go for an outfield player. But it’s so few and far between now, it feels like we lost something there.

At the very least we should be going back to the three subs of the pre-Covid years. That was plenty, there was no need for the temporary measure to be made permanent. Save that for pre-season friendlies where the result doesn’t matter and they end up fading away as the game wears on with so many changes and no rhythm. There have definitely been some competitive football matches that have felt like that since we went to the five subs!

4. TOO MANY TELEVISED GAMES

This might be controversial, but I’m kinda sick of so much football being on TV. You get Friday night games, Saturday lunch time games, Saturday 3pm games (that we don’t televise here), Saturday evening games, Saturday night games, Sunday lunch time games, Sunday afternoon games, Sunday evening games, Sunday night games, and of course Monday night games.

When on Earth do people get anything done?

And that’s just the domestic league fixtures! You get League Cup games in midweek, which have to fit around the UEFA games which mostly spread across Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday nights. There’s literally football on every single day these days!

Then you get international breaks, and those get spread out across the course of the week and weekend as well! When was the last time Scotland had a proper Saturday kick off for game? The Greece away game was Saturday night and that was the only game this year that fell on a Saturday. We don’t get to pick kick off times as UEFA and the TV companies pick for us. Here’s your schedule, this is when you’ll play, good luck getting from all over the country for your Monday night match. Yes, you’ll probably have to take time off work unless you work in the central belt.

Back in domestic football, 3pm Saturday kick offs, when you’re one of those clubs that they like picking for the TV, are almost unheard of. UEFA having two of their three competitions taking place on Thursday night doesn’t help matters either.

You could solve the Saturday 3pm issue a bit by lifting the restriction on televising them, but then people think that will impact attendances so don’t want to do that because others people will just stay in and watch a game rather than go to another game.

I don’t actually know anyone who prefers watching the game on the TV over going to the game. I’m sure they exist, but most people I know will always prefer being at the game, myself included (even if I don’t do it all that often these days)

The other reason they want them spread out is so people can watch all the games they are interested in. If they all take place at the same time, you can’t watch them all. Unless it’s the last day of the season of course, and then somehow we manage just fine.

We’re losing something spreading the games out all the time. When your nearest rival is playing at the same time of you, it’s exciting. There’s nothing quite like that murmur that goes around your stadium when you hear the team you want to lose has just conceded. We occasionally get that in midweek games now, but I can’t remember when that last happened at the weekend unless it’s the final day of the league season.

Put the games back at their regular slots, and stop showing so many games so we can go and do other things in our lives.

Although… I can’t say I even watch much of it at this point. I have too much to do, and the big money leagues don’t interest me that much. Or they annoy me because they have too much money, I’m not really sure. Either way, I don’t watch football from down south much, I barely pay any attention to European football unless as Scottish side is involved, and that never used to be the case. The 1990s Champions League was actually great to watch, before the money kicked in and you had six teams from the same country.

But that’s a different rant again.

5. TOO MANY GAMES

Following on from too many games on TV, there’s just too many games in general. That might seem a bit odd when you consider that 44 league games a season was a thing when I was growing up, but consider what else was going around then. European football was straight knockout with less teams in each competition and so less rounds, now the league phases alone last beyond Christmas. International football seemed to come around less frequently as well so we didn’t have as many breaks, but that might just be my perception. The domestic seasons didn’t last into June having started the previous July. It was August until May, and then you got a break.

Honestly, was I the only one who, come the end of the season, needed the break for a bit before it all started over again? Football can be exhausting, and I honestly don’t remember the last time it stopped. Seasons end late, international tournaments crop up over the summer and pre-season starts before they even end.

Look at December! It has bugged me for years how many games we pack in. The festive season is always busy with games, which I didn’t understand when I was single with no kids never mind when I’m always busy all the time these days! Give the players a break like other countries in Europe, they have families too! December is still busy even now when previously we were told it was necessary to make room for the winter break. We don’t even have that break now!

I would love to cut down on the number of games we have. For one, give me a sixteen team league with thirty games a season. Or I’d even settle for an eighteen team league with thirty four games. More competitive, less games trying to be crammed into the calendar. Everyone wins. Except the TV companies who want their four derbies a season of course. There’s the money thing again.

We could scrap the League Cup, we really don’t need two cup competitions, but I at least understand why we have that and I’m sure St Mirren fans would definitely give me pelters for saying that right now! We could also scrap the Challenge Cup, or at least put it back to being lower league only – the B teams in that were just an embarrassment this season.

UEFA is really the problem here though. The European spread is a joke at this point. We can’t fit games in properly because they have six rounds of games across three different tournament league phases, and the opening rounds of two of those span multiple midweeks with the third having a midweek all to itself for the final round. There’s then further rounds in the new year before we even hit the knockout rounds of which there are now four rounds that each have two legs so that’s another eight midweeks. Then they scoop up international breaks as well which wipe out two midweeks and weekend themselves (at least until they change that next season for one of them). All of that is after using pretty much every midweek in July and August for qualifiers.

To put that in perspective, there were only eight midweeks used for Celtic to get to the final in Lisbon in 1967 and Rangers to get to the final in Barcelona in 1972. Aberdeen had an extra two to reach the final in Gothenburg in 1983 because they were in the preliminary round. There’s a good chance that there’ll be no Scottish sides left this season before we even get to the point that there’s still eight midweeks left!

And remember that Rangers started in the second qualifying round this season so even if they do go out in January they’ll still have played in no fewer than fourteen European midweeks! Just to get grouped!

We need less games. Then we can have smaller squads, the cost of the game is less for the paying punters, we can mentally recharge ourselves when we need to do so, and maybe it will make things more competitive along the way as well.

And there we have it, five reasons modern football is rubbish. Feel free to let us know on the socials what you think!