What Is Wenger Up To? – by Frank Ofili

This man, Arsène Charles Ernest Wenger, former Arsenal manager and currently FIFA’s Chief of Global Football Development, is proposing a radical change to one of football’s governing rules. He has proposed that kick-in should replace throw-in  in football games. The proposal has been backed by football lawmakers body, IFAB.

What Wenger is proposing is that if a throw-in occurs in a football game, instead of using hands to throw it into the pitch, it should be kicked with leg instead.

Wenger’s only rationale for this strange proposal is that football is a leg sport – the very reason it is called football in the first place – and that it will curtail the proclivity of players to waste time.

Fine logic, if you ask me, except that Wenger has not told us what hand throw-in, as it is currently, removed from soccer. Neither has he explained exactly how kick-in would reduce time wasting. Besides, what now becomes of the goalkeeper who uses hands to play?

Would the goalkeeper role be scrapped, or changed such that instead of catching the ball with their hands, goalkeepers would now try to stop the ball from crossing the goal line with their feet?

And what about headers? Would they now become infringement? Would a goal scored from a header be cancelled because it was not scored with leg? What happens to chesting a ball down?

For sure, Wenger should be commended for constantly looking for ways to improve the game of football, and thus, reduce controversies. He, it was, who relentlessly agitated for goal-line technology that later eventuated the Video Assistant Referee (VAR). Still, I think this may be one innovation too many, and it is capable of removing the shine off the game.

Football thrives on its unpredictability and skill of its players. Too many regulations may rob it of this essential attribute, and thus, reduce it to a boring 90 minutes game.

Removing hand throw-in, I believe, would stunt the development of skill in that area of the beautiful the game.

I am aware this idea was first experimented in Japan ’93, but since then nothing has been heard about it, suggesting, perhaps, that it was not a viable option. Now Wenger wants to resurrect it.

While we continue to seek improvement in the game, it should not be such that its essential beauty is sacrificed. I believe there should be room in the game for ingenuity, artistry, the unimagined and unimaginable as we have been seeing over the years. If throw-in is scrapped, then it is a matter of time before there would be no more great deep throwers like the late Stephen Keshi, Jay Jay Okocha, Aaron Rodgers, Peter Schmeicel, Rory Delap, andy Legg, Megan Campbell and Co. It will be a shame.