The KNVB plans to test new rules in the Kitchen Champion Division in the 2023/2024 season. The football association is busy lobbying to get the pilot through, writes director of amateur football Jan Dirk van der Zee in a statement. column†
In consultation with the international rules committee IFAB, the KNVB wants to experiment with five adjustments: throwing in becomes kicking in, dribbling at a free kick, a time penalty of five minutes, unlimited substitutions and pure playing time of two times thirty minutes.
“If you come into football with ideas like this and want to innovate, you will have to deal with two kinds of fans: the football romantic, who prefers to leave everything as it is and is guided by nostalgia and sentiment, and the football enthusiast, who is open to for changes to make the game more attractive and fairer,” writes Van der Zee.
Gijs de Jong and Sjors Brouwer of the KNVB recently updated UEFA and FIFA about the rule changes. According to Van der Zee, it is not yet a foregone conclusion that the pilot can start in 2023 in the Kitchen Champion Division.
“The football romantic in particular is recognizable in UEFA and FIFA, who are known to have a tendency to go with their heels in the sand when changes are made,” the director writes. “That is why there will still have to be a lot of lobbying before the pilot can start in the Kitchen Champion Division.”
The KNVB has been testing the rule changes since 2017 in amateur football and in tournament form at promising teams of professional clubs. According to the association, the changes should make the game “faster, sportier, fairer and more attractive”.
This is how the KNVB explains the rule changes
- Throwing in becomes kicking in: If the ball has crossed the sideline, you can now shoot it in or dribble in. The same applies to the kick-off, a corner kick and goal kick – all actions that take at least fifteen minutes of playing time in a match in the current set-up.
- Dribbling on a free kick: On average, almost 11 percent of the playing time per match is lost to taking free kicks. Those interruptions take the speed out of the game, but also feed one of the biggest annoyances for spectators and players: time wasting. This is largely avoided with the self-pass, which allows you to dribble immediately as soon as the ball has been stopped by the ref.
- Time penalty: Another major annoyance in football is the hassle of getting yellow and red cards. Yellow has an image problem, because you now take the first card for granted, because of the lack of a direct consequence. With the five-minute penalty, that is a thing of the past.
- Unlimited substitutions: This measure also provides more speed and spectacle, because you can switch players without limitation with so-called ‘flying substitutions’, which means that the game is no longer stopped.
- Pure playing time: In 2020, an average Champions League match consisted of just under sixty minutes of pure playing time. With these new rules, football matches are shortened to two times thirty minutes.