Soccer in the US has continually experimented over the years, trying to find a balance between the game experienced around the world and serving up a uniquely Americanized product to its domestic audience, with rules echoing those found in the nation’s major sports leagues.
Some changes were revolutionary and stuck around – a rudimentary form of the backpass rule was an innovation of the North American Soccer League in the 1980s, for example, long before it was adopted throughout the game in 1992; likewise the use of substitutes, which was pioneered by the American Soccer League in the 1920s more than three decades before the idea was written into the laws of the game internationally.
Others are better forgotten. There was the two-point goal. There were ejections for persistent fouling. There was even an effort (who came up with this doozy?) to use corner kicks to decide tied games.
But there are a handful of innovations instituted Stateside, that have either faded away or remained confined to US soccer. While we’re not saying that any of the following should be instituted in the Premier League tomorrow, they could work in modified form in some places outside the US.
“American” penalties
Introduced in 1981 in an attempt to revitalize the flagging NASL, hockey-style penalties were deemed a more entertaining method for settling tied games and a greater test of a player’s skill than a traditional spot kick.
The shootouts alone couldn’t save the NASL. The league that once glittered with stars such as Franz Beckenbauer, Johan Cruyff and Pelé was defunct three years later. But when MLS was founded in 1996, this unique approach to deciding games was retained and used to settle every match that ended all square – no ties allowed.
Although, to the non-American eye, this alternative to penalty shootouts was unusual the rules were simple: starting 35 yards from goal, the attacking player had five seconds to beat the goalkeeper in a one-on-one showdown. The attacker could elect to shoot from distance, carry the ball closer to goal before striking or attempt to dribble around the keeper, and if the goalie fouled them in the process, a regular penalty kick would be awarded.
It was fun, it was different and it was, inarguably, a greater test of skill than an unimpeded shot from the spot. Settling tied games in league play is a non-starter. But could the one-on-one shootout work better than penalties in knockout games? Some believe it would.
“I thought the shootout was fun,” former USMNT coach Bruce Arena told Goal in 2020. “And, you know, it took a lot of talent, the shootout, and there were some remarkable goals and exciting times during the shootout so I thought that was fantastic.
“I would prefer, actually, in all competitions around the world, if games went into overtime and teams played out the 30 minutes of overtime and it’s still tied, I’d love to see a shootout rather than penalty kicks.”
Christian Pulisic agrees. “I think instead of penalty kicks, they should do the old dribble from 30 yards or whatever and go at the goalie one-on-one,” Pulisic said last year on Tim Ream’s Indirect podcast.
It’s not just Americans that back the system though. In 2017, legendary Dutch striker Marco van Basten advocated for MLS-style shootouts to be adopted across the globe in knockout play, one of a handful of rule changes – including abolishing offsides – he pitched to Fifa when he took up the role of technical director.
“This is spectacular for the viewers and interesting for the player,” Van Basten said in an interview with Bild. “With this idea, [the player] has more possibilities: he can dribble, shoot, wait, and the goalkeeper responds. This is more like a typical playing situation.”
Discontinuous clock
In the interregnum between the 1994 World Cup and the inauguration of MLS two years later, the United States International Soccer League (USISL) – a sprawling, interregional league – was used as a live test case for a swath of proposed rule changes.
Bigger goals to encourage higher-scoring games and penalty shots for cumulative team fouls were among the more left-field adjustments to the laws of the game trialed in the USISL. One that made more sense was the use of a discontinuous game clock.
The league’s rule makers noted that the average time the ball was in play during games at the 1990 World Cup in Italy was 58 minutes. They determined that, rather than have the referee stop his watch every time the ball went out of play and tot up the time to be added at the end of each match, a 60-minute discontinuous game clock would be used. With games split into 30-minute halves, the clock would stop every time play halted, eliminating time wasting, easing the referee’s load and creating uniformity throughout the league.
Although this idea was never adopted in MLS, the upstart professional league did utilize a 45-minute countdown clock for each half until 1999.
Arsène Wenger, Fifa’s chief of global development, has advocated for similar changes since taking up his role with the sport’s governing body. He pushed forward rules that have increased the volume of added time at the end of halves in an effort to crack down on time-wasting. But back when he was first looking to overhaul the game, Wenger mulled the idea of introducing the USISL’s countdown clock to ensure the ball was in play for a full 60 minutes. The countdown clock was tested at the Future of Football Cup in 2021, although it was not a Fifa trial.
Salary cap
Within non-US sports, the notion of a salary cap is anathema and, as is almost certainly the case in European soccer, unworkable – player salaries have been unrestricted and expanding exponentially for so long that implementing restrictive measures now would be as messy and as worthwhile as trying to stuff toothpaste back into a tube.
And over its nearly two decades of existence, the MLS salary cap has been adapted and loosened to allow for star players to be imported on higher salaries, an effort to increase the league’s appeal and global footprint.
But, in general, the salary cap works as an equalizer, leveling the playing field and ensuring success is not simply a result of spending. The same cannot be said of the major European leagues. In the past 10 seasons, there have been eight different MLS Cup winners. Over the same period in the Premier League, there have been just four different champions, with Manchester City winners six times overall and in five of the last six seasons.
Playoff system
There are reasonable arguments for and against a playoff system in any sport. It does, to an extent, devalue regular-season play, with the majority of a campaign an exercise in determining who plays whom when the real action begins in the post-season.
But as any fan of the NFL or the NBA will attest, nothing compares to the drama of the playoffs. An integral part of the US sports landscape, playoff brackets are, of course, not unique to America. The Football League playoffs consistently produce some of the most dramatic and consequential matches in the English football calendar every year, while the knockout rounds of the World Cup and the Champions League are essentially a playoff bracket for soccer’s greatest prizes.
Indoor soccer
There have been various iterations of indoor leagues throughout US soccer history – most notably the Major Indoor Soccer League, which ran from 1978 to 1992.
Indoor soccer used to be hugely popular in Britain, too. The Daily Express National Five-a-Sides was a yearly tournament held at Wembley Arena between 1968 and 1986. Professional teams from England and Scotland were invited and crowds in excess of 8,000 fans would fill the stands, with matches broadcast to a national audience. Such events would be unthinkable in the modern era due to the injury risk presented by hyper-competitive pre-season games on hard surfaces.
With the infrastructure already in place due to the proliferation and standard of ice hockey and basketball arenas across the country, indoor soccer naturally attained a sturdier foothold in America. In US Soccer’s doldrum period between the NASL’s demise and the birth of MLS, indoor play was often the most viable route to a career in the game for college soccer standouts unable to secure a move overseas.
