Innovation is a game changer. The ability to put forward an exceptional idea, a more effective process or a brilliant new device has always been synonymous with success in the soccer world. This can go the other way though, with the worst soccer innovations making clubs and players look extremely silly.
Whether that success is then measured on the pitch, in the television ratings or with regards to the club’s bottom line, the game’s movers and shakers are always looking for bigger and better solutions.
The rewards for such innovations are preeminence, advantage and, finally, worldwide imitation. Soccer, for all its constancy and longevity, refuses to become antiquated.
However, for every ingenious tactical strategy, fantastically devised free kick routine or vanishing spray innovation, there are hundreds of ideas that simply don’t work. These are:
The Worst Soccer Innovations of All-Time
Early MLS penalty shootouts:
In an early attempt to “Americanize” soccer for its faltering fanbase, MLS introduced a penalty shootout method that will look vaguely familiar to NHL viewers. Standing 35 yards from goal, players had five seconds to dribble towards the keeper and get a shot off.
Highlights include keepers taking down advancing attackers in the box, resulting in, erm, penalties within a penalty. I know, it’s all a bit Inceptionesque.
This free kick routine:
Drawn up on the tactical whiteboard and undoubtedly executed to perfection on the training ground, this is a bit of experimental genius. Blocking the keeper’s line of vision with two well placed martyrs in front of the wall, there’s no way he’ll stop this pioneering vision of dead ball execution.
The results are pretty much exactly what you’d expect.
Colorado Caribou’s kits:
Voted the worst jersey in the history of sports, the Colorado Caribou’s kit, bearing midriff fringe and a faux-leather color way, gave the team an apparent disadvantage in the heat and posed as a danger to opponents, who could be whipped in the face by the tassels.
Ya beauties! Photo: @manuelh2 | Twitter
We can only imagine how this sales pitch went down.
The Jabulani:
The ball that knuckled, soared and moved in utterly unpredictable ways. Fortunately for soccer fans, it was only the official ball of the 2010 FIFA World Cup, no big deal.
Brazilian striker Luis Fabiano called it “supernatural”, David James huffed “the ball is dreadful” and Iker Casillas lamented that “it is very sad that a competition so important…will be played with such a horrible ball.”
Interesting fact, this ball still gives Robert Green nightmares.
Just another ball, they said. Photo: @zeppy_worldcup | Twitter
Thanks to Giovanni van Bronckhorst, the Jabulani’s exceptional flightpath will never be forgotten.
Goal Celebration Music:
The guttural roar of the crowd after a goal, the pent-up excitement released into a cacophony of noise and jubilation - the post-goal celebrations within a soccer stadium are a glorious thing to behold and hear.
That is, unless your club has taken it upon themselves to start blasting contemporary hit radio out the stadium loudspeakers. Jumbotron generated chants and Zombie Nation’s Kernkraft 400 just don’t have a place in The Beautiful Game.
The introduction of the word "soccer":
Dive into the infernal regions of comment sections beneath any American soccer article and you’ll run into it. The same tedious and exasperating back and forth over the use of the word soccer.
Honestly, I can’t stand the word. It stirs up mental images of minivans, orange slices and totally uncoordinated leg movements.
That being said, I’m an American and I live with it. I carry on living my life in the face of such an ill-sounding word. More importantly, don’t blame me, blame the English.
In order to distinguish the game from other sports which were played on foot, as opposed to more equestrian activities, “soccer” originated as an abbreviation of “association”. It served as a quick way to differentiate between association football, soccer, and rugby football.
Ladies and gentlemen, "soccer", one of the all-time worst soccer innovations.
Blame England. Photo: @ESPNFC | Twitter
