Football is the best team sport, but it has the worst rules.

It's the best because it is unsurpassed in rewarding athletic ability, both physical (speed, strength, stamina, agility) and mental (teamwork, vision). Plus, it requires very little equipment, and can be played well by ordinary-looking people. And a match normally is completed in less than two hours.

But the rules of the world's most popular sport are so badly flawed as to call into question the viability of a planet whose most advanced species can entertain them. I'm going to propose half a dozen significant changes that will promote the game's best features, make it more exciting to watch, and reduce the likelihood that a team achieves a favorable result through blind luck. Because I am not a life-long student of the game and have never played it, some of my suggestions will no doubt require modification. But I maintain that most if not all of my main points are obvious.

Following a drawn match or one-goal match, more often than not there is a controversy that would have changed the result -- a penalty given or denied, an off-side real or imagined, a sending-off merited or not, a ball crossing the goal line undetected, or a referee adding on too little or too much time. My suggestions will eliminate some of these controversies and reduce the likelihood of the others. (Apologies to those fans who apparently feel that controversy is the essence of the sport, and the field of play merely a necessary preliminary).

First of all, its the nineteenth century, right? Sorry, I meant twentieth. What? Are you sure? My word, how time flies. Anyway, for heaven's sake, let's get rid of your ten-times-great-grandfather's pocket watch. Why are we using eighteenth-century chronology in this day and age? While other sports measure the closing moments of a match in tenths of a second, football fans have their attention riveted on a man groping for his breast pocket and adjusting his monocle (while his touchline assistant is presumably using an astrolabe to verify the longitude of the stadium while checking for off-sides).

Currently, if three minutes of extra time is mandated, the match may be extended by anything from two minutes and fifty seconds to four minutes or more, without any apparent rhyme or reason. (Perhaps the fly-wheel needs grinding, or a flea has got into the works). And if there is a significant stoppage during the time added on, it's anyone's guess when the match will end.

And am I the only one wondering how the fourth official determines the amount of extra time to begin with? Is he keeping track or just making it up? It would seem to be the latter, because evidently no match has ever been delayed by three and a half minutes, it's always three minutes or four minutes exactly.

So the first suggestion is to install a proper stadium clock that everyone can see. When the ball goes out of play, stop the clock. (This will put paid to most of the petty gamesmanship, most notably the holy rolling, and for example tossing the ball away instead of handing it to one's opponent for a throw-in).

Currently the actual amount of playing time is probably less than ninety minutes, because (even disregarding injuries) the stoppages for goals, free kicks, goal kicks, corner kicks and throw-ins are greater then the time added on. So this suggestion would increase the time the ball is in play by a few minutes per game.

My second point is that the current rules do not allow infractions to punished appropriately. Even with perfect refereeing, the punishment is almost always either too harsh or too lenient.

Too lenient? A player near the centre of the pitch is tackled illegally and is awarded a free kick. In other words, he is given possession of the ball, which he already had. Effectively, there is no punishment. Meanwhile, the defenders have had a few seconds to regroup, thus gaining an advantage by committing the infraction.

Suppose that a teammate of the player who was tackled illegally in the previous example takes the ball and continues the attack. Then the referee "plays the advantage" and doesn't stop the play at all. Again the defense has profited from illegal play, by removing one player from the attack.

Leniency is often seen in the vicinity of the goal, where the referee is understandably reluctant to award a penalty for an infraction that is not obvious or blatant. Thus, defenders know they can get away with a certain amount of tugging and shoving near their own goal. Significantly, the same actions in the same area are called when committed by an attacker, because the sanction in that case is trivial. The solution is to give the referee an alternative, lesser punishment (I'm coming to it), rather than awarding a penalty.

Too harsh? A penalty is roughly equivalent to two-thirds of a goal, in other words a penalty is successful about two-thirds of the time. For many infractions in the penalty area, this is too much. Of course the referee's dilemma (to award a penalty or not) is compounded by all the diving that goes on.

And for a punishment that is way over the top, what happens when the last defender fouls an attacker in the penalty area? A penalty is awarded and the defender is sent off. When this happens near the beginning of the match, it is effectively over before it has started.

(On the other hand, there is the rare case where a penalty and a sending-off is too lenient. When a Uruguayan defender deliberately handled the ball on the goal line during the recent World Cup tournament, the rules should simply award a goal, along with a sending-off).

One of the problems with the red card is that it is an inconsistent punishment. If it happens in the last minute of a match, the team plays short-handed for one minute, while if it occurs in the first minute of a match the punishment is ninety times as severe. You could argue that players should allow for this by playing cautiously at the beginning of a match and going for broke near the end, and to some extent this is exactly what they do. Still, there may be a better solution.

My solution is in two parts: First, introduce a penalty box or sin bin which is used in ice hockey and a few other sports. (Because the word penalty has a specialized meaning in football, I will avoid using it in its ordinary-language sense, which is why I will be using sin bin instead of penalty box.) Secondly, allow free substitution of players throughout a match.

A player flagged for a foul would go to the sin bin, and there would be a free kick as at present. The duration of the sanction, during which the player's team would be a man short. would be from (perhaps) three to twelve minutes, depending on the nature and location of the foul. (The details need to be fine-tuned. For example, for garden-variety tugging and shoving off the ball in the defensive zone, the appropriate sanction might be three minutes, and resume play via the corner kick).

The referee would still "play the advantage," but (ice hockey gets this right) when the ball changes sides the punishment should be meted out.

What about the penalty area? First of all it's the wrong shape. It should be semi-oval rather than rectangular. I say this because a point inside the far corner of the current rectangle is a less dangerous position than a point just outside the box but directly out from the centre of the goal. So I will refer to a goal area, semi-oval in shape and somewhat smaller than the current box, in fact small enough to be inscribed inside it.

With a flexible system of punishments that would force a team to play short-handed, it seems to me that there would be less need to resort to the penalty spot. For example, a team committing a serious foul inside the goal area would face a period of perhaps six to twelve minutes short-handed, plus a free kick from the point of the foul. Although this free kick could be defended by the whole team, it would still be dangerous. If that many defenders on the goal line is deemed too limiting to the attacking team, their number could be restricted, with the rest outside the goal area. If the foul occurs within a few feet of the goal line (too close for an effective free kick), the attacking team should be allowed to move the ball further back, within well-defined limits.

If an offense occurs near the end of a match, with insufficient time remaining to serve the full sin-bin sentence, a harsher punishment is required, perhaps the penalty kick as currently used. But I am inclined to favour an alternative that would require more than one player to sit out. For example, if a player committed a twelve-minute foul with ten minutes remaining, he would be banished for the rest of the match, but a team-mate would also have to sit out for two minutes.   If the foul occurred with two minutes to go, the team would play six men short for those two minutes. (Remember, that is two minutes of actual play, not thirty seconds of play and ninety seconds of watching the ball soar up into the stands, someone rolling on the ground clutching himself, etc).

All of this should be considered in conjunction with allowing free substitution of players, not only during stoppages, but "on the fly" as well. An extra official (along with the timekeeper) would be stationed between the players' benches to ensure against too many men on the pitch. The number of players dressing for each match would be limited, of course. I am not best qualified to suggest a number, but I'll throw eighteen out there.

Legs would remain fresh. The game would be faster. According to the vagaries of the battle, a team could switch instantly from a defensive posture to an attacking mode by making a "wholesale change" -- and switch back again. The manager's role will be more immediate. Anyone doubting this has never watched basketball or ice hockey.

A player would still be sent to the showers for committing a cynical foul such as deliberately handling the ball, abusing the officials, reckless endangerment or gratuitous roughness. Because his team would not play short-handed for the remainder of the match (only for the number of minutes prescribed by the rules), the referee could be more liberal with red cards than at present.

My fourth proposal is the simplest and no doubt the least controversial: video review. I know this is already in the works for goal adjudication. The fact that some people actually oppose the idea speaks volumes, but enough said. Whether it should be used for other purposes as well is a good question. Offsides?

Perhaps, but I have a different solution for that problem. And it is a problem. It has been shown that something like a quarter of all disallowed goals flagged for offside were actually onside, and a significant number of goals allowed to stand are in fact offside. It's not really the fault of the officials. How can you simultaneously watch the player kicking the ball as well as the player who eventually receives the ball, who may be 50 metres away? Even when you get them both in the same camera shot and slow it down from several different angles, you can't always tell. (And is it a question of where the player's feet are, or where his head is, or something else? I've never heard anyone address this. I wouldn't even be surprised if the rules of football don't even spell it out.)

First of all, could the concept of offside be scrapped entirely? What would the game be like without it? I don't know for sure. But I'm guessing you might find one or more players camped out permanently in the attacking zone, perhaps even in the goal area. A defender would probably have to remain nearby to mark each of these opportunists. Strategies would have to change, and the game would flow differently. Would it require less skill, or more? I can't say whether it would be a better or worse game. But it would be different, and for the sake of argument let's assume we want to keep the "shape" of the game as it is.

Ice hockey has dealt with this issue by drawing a straight line across the playing surface, about two-thirds of the way down the ice. When the puck crosses this line, every attacking player must have at least one foot on or behind this line, otherwise he is offside.

One huge advantage of this approach is that it's much easier to call -- if you stand on the line it's pretty obvious whether a player has crossed it before the ball. But we said we don't want to change the feel of the game too much, except to make it faster and more exciting. Would an offside line achieve this?

One thing that bothers me about it is that the defenders could "clear the zone" simply by kicking or heading the ball beyond the offside line, which is a fairly easy thing to accomplish, thus forcing all the attackers to retreat. This would tend to blunt and slow down the attack, not what we want at all.

It occurs to me that we can adjust the rule (departing from the ice hockey model) by declaring that the zone is not cleared until one of the defenders actually touches the ball beyond the zone. In other words, merely knocking the ball out of one's own zone would not be enough to necessitate a new attack. The attackers could remain inside, ready to resume the attack, until one of the defenders has played the ball outside his own zone. Only then would the attackers be forced to retreat, to initiate a new attack or to defend.

(In passing I will note that this would end the offside trap strategy, which rewards four men for their ability to move in a straight line. For fans who delight in this move, I recommend synchronized swimming or traditional folk dancing.)

Before we leave offsides, another problem with the current rule is that it legislates against plays that no one in their right mind would want to invalidate. For example, a nifty give-and-go near the end-line, A to B back to A and into the goal, brilliantly conceived, cleverly executed. That goal will surely lead the highlight reel. But wait ... the assistant's flag is up. Let's see the replay ... yes, well spotted, B was indeed in an offside position, his left foot was five centimetres closer to the end-line than the defender's right elbow, and very fortunately the assistant was not deceived by the fact that the pass he received was actually moving away from the goal (although toward the end-line). Once again, brilliant work by the referee's assistant. That flagging will assuredly lead the highlight reel at the referee's assistants' annual clambake.

Well, may we back that up one more time please? Did we come to the stadium to applaud brilliant football or great flagging? Surely, if my original assumption about the offside rule was correct (that its purpose is to promote a certain shape and flow to the overall game), it wasn't intended to eliminate the type of play I've just described. Allowing that goal to stand would reward creative offense without altering defensive strategy in any way.

To conclude my remarks about offside, I lack the experience and imagination to be certain that my suggestion will preserve the overall feel of the game, but it will at least make the call much less controversial and promote clever offense within the attacking zone.

My sixth proposal is to remove one man from each side, making it ten-versus-ten including the goalkeepers. The pitch seems too crowded, especially near the goal. The extra space should reward skilled players. Note that with free substitution there will still be more players involved in each match than at present, so job loss will not be an issue.

I also think we need a second referee. There is too much going on for a single referee to monitor.

My next proposal, in two parts, designed to promote attacking play, is a variation of basketball's "shot clock" and "over and back" rules. From a turnover or start of play in the defensive zone, perhaps fifteen seconds to move the ball over the half-way line (let's call this the "half-way clock"), and another twenty seconds (the "attack clock") to advance the ball into a more forward position (perhaps similar to the goal area but rather larger). There is no compulsion to put the ball on goal, because (unlike basketball) this is not so easy to achieve in football. The point is to prevent three or four players doing a warm-up drill near midfield for minutes at a time.

Also, once the ball has been advanced beyond the offside line, it may not be passed back beyond the half-way line, at the cost of the other team having a throw-in on the half-way line. Currently it is not unusual to see the ball passed all the way back to the goalkeeper, sometimes from a free kick in an attacking position without the defenders having even touched the ball. (I realize this tactic tends to produce a ripple of applause along the terraces, so there must be some who find it deeply satisfying.)

My last idea targets the shoving and tugging. When a corner kick is struck, all players on both sides (except the goalkeeper) must stand on designated spots, as for basketball free throws. Two of the defenders' spots would be (optionally) at the goalposts, while all remaining spots would be on the perimeter of the goal area (which is semi-oval and somewhat smaller than the current rectangle). The spots would be at least an arm's length apart, so wrestling matches could not begin until after the ball is struck.

Recall that small-time tugging and shoving will receive a punishment of perhaps three minutes. To make this easier to call, the mere fact of deliberately putting your hand on an opponent could constitute an offense. You may say this is ridiculous, but ice hockey used to be plagued by clutching and grabbing, which was more or less eliminated by just such a re-definition. Now, skill counts, the players can play.

To sum up, here are my proposals for improving the world's greatest game. All the current skills will be retained and more highly rewarded, the game will be faster and more exciting, and there will be less gamesmanship.

1. Install a time clock.

2. Introduce a sin bin.

3. Allow free substitution.

4. Video review.

5. Change the offside rule.

6. Change the shape and concept of the penalty area (goal area).

7. Nine men plus the goalkeeper.

8. Two referees.

9. Half-way clock, attack clock, and over-and-back rule.

10. Designated spots for corners.

11. Hard line on tugging and shoving.

Now, what can we do about the diving?