Michel Platiniformer president of the UEFA and a great former player, among others, of Juventus, gave a long interview to RMC Sportsin which the three-time Ballon d’Or winner explains: “The solution for football? Perhaps we should remove a player and play with ten. In the twentieth century, we started playing with eleven, but then the players ran less, were slower and also less physically strong. So it could be a good thing to limit the number of players because it would free up spaces”.
His words are not casual, but are based on an analysis of the style of play that is adopted today: “People of my generation do not watch football anymore because they no longer identify with it. In possession play, there are too many passes forward rather than back. I am not criticizing, but in my era we saw more offensive football”.
The idea is therefore to revolutionize football, as Marco Van Basten, as a FIFA consultant, tried to do, who proposed to change the offside rule, abolish extra time, introduce a temporary expulsion. The problems are there, but, for these two great former footballers, they are not solved by playing more and more games, which instead only cause more injuries and a reduction in the pace of the game.