Norway's 'extra player' idea for one-sided youth matches

marl0we

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Haven't seen a thread on this and thought it was quite interesting - the Norwegian FA are considering allowing teams who go 4-0 down in youth matches to bring on an extra player to make matches more competitive. What do you think?

http://www.whoateallthepies.tv/misc...-even-up-one-sided-youth-game-thrashings.html

Norwegian FA Propose ‘Extra Player’ Rule To Even Up One-Sided Thrashings, Henning Berg Is On Board!

The laws of the game are ever evolving, hence the fact that absolutely no-one knows what the soddin’ offside law actually is anymore, but the Norwegian FA – in their role as football’s global envelope pushers – are keen to introduce a radical new rule at youth level to help even out heavily one-sided tonkings in the interest of fairness.

The proposed law will see teams that fall 4-0 behind allowed to bring on an extra player, a twelfth man, to help turn the tide and is being backed by none other than former Blackburn, Manchester United and Norway centre-half Henning Berg who is currently one of the runners and riders in the frame for the managerial vacancy at Ewood.

“It’s a good rule that will lead to more even matches,” said Berg, who was capped 100 times by Norway. “It’s no fun to lose 17-0. It’s no fun to win 17-0 either.”

However Aalesund coach, Kjetil Rekdal, who played alongside Berg at the heart of the Norwegian defence on several occasions, is altogether less enamoured with the plans.

“It can be positive to get more people active, but it can be negative if you destroy or punish those who are better,” he told the Norwegian newspaper Verdens Gang.

Not sure about the whole ‘winning 17-0 isn’t fun’ thing for starters. Pies played in several youth sides who would’ve been glad of being on the fluffy end of a hammering or two rather than the other way round.

What happens if the team with 12 men draw pull it back and go ahead? Does the extra player go off again or does he take up a floating role, change his shirt and switch to playing for the opposition? So many questions.

Well, best of luck with the proposal Henning anyway, you big Norwegian maverick you!
 
Why not. As the guy says, winning by 17 isn't much more fun than loosing by 17. The kids getting dicked will likely never be professional footballers and the kids doing the dicking get a slightly harder test to make them better footballers.

Could be a bit embarrassing for the loosing team if they carry on getting smashed though :D
 
What will happen if at 4-0 the losing team bring an extra player on and bring it back to 4-4 or go ahead? At 4-4 does the player then go off or do the team who were winning 4-0 get to bring on an extra player too? Doesn't really make much sense, I'd have thought taking 1 player off (so it's 11 vs 10) would make more sense, but then it's unfair on the player coming off I suppose.
 
This is a far more honest idea than the one currently used by Manchester United where they dress the twelth man in a Black outfit and give him a whistle.
 
RyanP3609 said:
What will happen if at 4-0 the losing team bring an extra player on and bring it back to 4-4 or go ahead? At 4-4 does the player then go off or do the team who were winning 4-0 get to bring on an extra player too? Doesn't really make much sense, I'd have thought taking 1 player off (so it's 11 vs 10) would make more sense, but then it's unfair on the player coming off I suppose.

Not sure, maybe you're allowed an extra player as long as you're 4 goals behind but if you make it 4-1 you go back to 11? Or maybe bringing on the extra player means you concede the match and play it out like a friendly? I think it's a good idea, no-one really gains anything by being in a mismatch.
 
marl0we said:
RyanP3609 said:
What will happen if at 4-0 the losing team bring an extra player on and bring it back to 4-4 or go ahead? At 4-4 does the player then go off or do the team who were winning 4-0 get to bring on an extra player too? Doesn't really make much sense, I'd have thought taking 1 player off (so it's 11 vs 10) would make more sense, but then it's unfair on the player coming off I suppose.

Not sure, maybe you're allowed an extra player as long as you're 4 goals behind but if you make it 4-1 you go back to 11? Or maybe bringing on the extra player means you concede the match and play it out like a friendly? I think it's a good idea, no-one really gains anything by being in a mismatch.

Yeah true, I suppose if it was to become a friendly and finished the game at 4-0 "officially" then that's ok. If it works well for the kids it's only a beneficial thing, as I'm sure it'll do kids more confidence knowing they got beat 4-2 rather than 18-0.
 
City Raider said:
you might get to 3-0 and think why risk playing against 12, back off and the game dies off

Precisely this, teams would time waste at 3-0 , awful idea.
 
Why not at youth level? As long as it doesn't enter men's level or can be exploited somehow.

Gives the team losing a numerical advantage and the other team members not to learn complacency
 
adrianr said:
Could be a bit embarrassing for the loosing team if they carry on getting smashed though :D
This would happen 9 times out of 10. I played in teams as a kid where, due to the insane set up of the league meaning that you stayed in each age group for two years, we were both the drubbers and the drubbees in alternate seasons. An additional player would have made no difference whatsoever in either case; if you're destined for a 15-0 twatting, a 12th man isn't going to help you.

While this idea is well meaning, they're looking at fixing the wrong thing in my opinion. The system of young recreational footballers playing on large, poor-quality pitches is the main reason for these drubbings, as it instantly hands a huge advantage to the more physically developed kids, and there can be HUGE differences in this among children. Did the team that won 15-0 do so because they were more skillful, more positionally aware and more technically and tactically astute? Or did they destroy the other team simply because they had a really big strong lad up top, two lightning fast wingers and a beast at the back who could kick the ball much further than everyone else?

Small skillful players get overwhelmed in these circumstances as they don't get the opportunity to shine. I read a really interesting study last year that showed the full consequences of this. I can't find the study in question, but the figures were startling; something like 60% of academy players in England, where the year is classified as September-August, were born between September and December. In Europe, where it's done January-December, around 70% were born between January and April.

The article I read said that the likes of Ajax, Barcelona, Bayern Munich etc attempt to correct this extreme bias by overlooking physical attributes and then arranging their teams strictly by age. So when you are 11, you play only with other 11 year olds, and then on the day of your 12th birthday you move up to the next team. On your 13th birthday you move up again, and so on. While you will still play with players who are 11 months older than you when you first move up, you won't permanently be the smallest/youngest/least developed as you will progress through the year to become the biggest/oldest/most developed.

How that could be implemented in local youth leagues I don't know, but it's clear that something needs to be done to address this issue, and I don't think throwing on an extra player is the way to do it.

Edit: It's called the Relative Age Effect, and it can be seen right across society, not only in football. There are loads of studies about it if anyone's interested in reading more about it.
 

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