Hi everyone! First post in a while so what better topic to cover than football haha.

So just to start off, I'm not here to discuss whether or not soccer is a good sport or not, obviously it's the only sport that matters in Europe/South America/Africa....but one thing nobody can deny is it hasn't really caught on in Canada/USA yet. Obviously we all play it for fun, and there's the MLS league now which must be doing okay...but damn soccer is not popular here in Canada. For North Americans it's too boring.

So I got to thinking what could make soccer popular here in Canada/USA. So I'm not here to suggest worldwide rule changes or anything like that because it's fine how it is in most of the world...but I at least have some proposed changes for like the Major League Soccer league here in North America to make it watchable for us fat and lazy North Americans.

So here are my ideas, if any of you are basketball fans you'll notice I stole a few of my ideas from the NBA

Rule change #1 - You get a certain amount of time to cross over midfield, say 30 seconds. If 30 seconds pass and you haven't crossed over midfield the other team gets the ball at midfield for possession/free kick. (This will promote more offensive play and less stalling with the ball in your own end)

Rule change #2 - Once you cross midfield, you cannot pass or run the ball back into your own end. If you do, the other team gets possession. (This is also to promote more offensive play, and less passing practice with your own team)

Rule change #3 - No intentionally passing the ball back to your own goalie. Not that it would be smart to do this anymore due to Rule change #1, but I really hate watching a game of soccer when all they do is pass it around in their own end and get the goalie involved. 

Rule change #4 - Shot clock!! Once you cross midfield (which you now have a specified amount of time to do) the shot clock starts and you have a certain amount of time to put a shot towards the net or you lose possession of the ball. 

Rule change #5 - Less players per side. Right now with 11 players per team...22 people on the field at once is pretty cramped and there isn't much open space. To make it the more offensive oriented game that North Americans want, I'd say cut it down to maybe 8 per side to open up the field for more space to run and pass and make plays happen. 

Rule change #6 - Shorter games. I'd cut it to a 60 minute game with two 30 minute halves. This way with shorter games you'll be able to go harder and not have to worry about conserving as much energy for the end of the game. 

Well that's pretty much it. Let me know what you guys think? Is soccer fine the way it is and it'll eventually catch on in USA/Canada anyways....or would some/all of my changes make it a more North American oriented sport?

And once again, I'm not proposing these changes for Europe or wherever soccer is popular now, just in Canada/USA to give it a chance to compete with our big 4 sports. 

kill american football

Irrelevant lol...American football is the most popular sport in America, there's no killing it. I'm just trying to see how European football could compete here since I don't think it every will with the current format. 

When your done it's not gonna be football anymore everybody does not have to like everything it's ok.

Cange the name of american football to american rugby. Seriously why is it called football if the players almost never kick the ball with the foot in the first place. It's much closer in every way to rugby than it is to soccer.

North America would gobble Soccer up if they would understand that a big part of it is fake drama. NA is big in professional wrestling so I am sure if they could see how much fake injuries and cries and drops to the ground by soccer players in the hope of penalizing an opposing team they would start loving it.

Soccer could have a starting target and be aimed at WWE fans.

They tried rule changes and less people showed up. Since adopting standard rues the sport has increased in popularity every year for 15 years.

20K average attendance this year, highest in league history. New television contracts 7x in value of previous ones for the league.

More people than ever in the US watched the World Cup with the final being the second most watched sporting event in the country behind only the NFL Super Bowl. Thousands gathered in hundreds of paces to watch matches. I was at Soldier Field with 30K pus to watch the US play Begium.

We don't need changes, the sport is doing fine and only growing in popularity. I don't know at what point a these statistics get it into folks heads that millions love the sport as it is. All we need is time for others to finally notice it.

It won't be football anymore if they make those changes.

Do you mean the sport that is formally called "rugby football"?

From what I've been told, team sports historically evolved into one of two groups: mounted sports like polo and dismounted sports. The latter group - which always had a huge variety - were collectively called football. It's why soccer/football is formally called "association football." For the record, American football is technically called "gridiron football." Each English-speaking nation has unsurprisingly defaulted to lazily calling the more locally popular version as "football."

Wow, now that's really lazy naming. It's as if Each videogame would only be called Videogame with the name of the developer and maybe a number