Thirty years of the backpass ban: The story of modern football’s best rule change, Powered by The Athletic - Optus 23/7/22


By Stuart James

“It was the opening game and the first time this rule was ever in effect in an official competition,” Kyle Campbell says, smiling. “I joke with people all the time that, ‘Yeah, I was called for the first backpass violation in history’.”

Campbell is a real estate lawyer in California these days. But back in 1991, he was playing in goal for the United States at the Under-17 World Championship in Italy, where he performed brilliantly and was named in FIFA’s team of the tournament.

Campbell saved a penalty from Alessandro Del Piero in that opening game against the hosts, and Pele presented him with his man of the match award afterwards — a state-of-the-art twin-cassette JVC stereo. Yet the story that he dines out on is handling that first ever backpass.

This summer marks the 30th anniversary of the backpass law being introduced, following FIFA’s successful experiment in Italy a year earlier. It is arguably the most significant — and the best — rule change in the modern game. The mindnumbing sight of goalkeepers rolling the ball out to defenders, receiving it back, picking it up and holding it in their hands to kill games, was gone.

Trawling back through footage of Graeme Souness’ 70-yard backpass for Rangers against Dynamo Kyiv in 1987, or Peter Schmeichel and the Denmark defenders running the clock down in the 1992 European Championship final against Germany, is a bizarre experience, not least because you wonder how that kind of thing, which everyone in the game was doing, had been tolerated for so long.

“If I watch games from that time — I don’t want to lose respect for the players who played then, I had my idols — but today I can’t watch this anymore, especially the view from the goalkeeper,” Pascal Zuberbuhler, the former Switzerland goalkeeper and FIFA’s senior football expert, tells The Athletic. “I was excited at that time, ‘Oh, great football game’. Backpass. In the hands. Rolling out. Backpass. In the hands. Today, I can’t see this. It’s crazy.”

Back in 1992, the main reason for introducing the backpass law was to reduce the amount of timewasting to make football more entertaining. Thirty years later, timewasting still exists in one form or another and probably always will, but even the backpass-law sceptics — and there were plenty of those at the time — accept that the game has benefitted hugely from the change.

With goalkeepers now acting as defensive playmakers, and even performing Cruyff turns on their own goal lines, football has evolved in a way that few could have imagined — but that small number includes Daniel Jeandupeux, who wrote to FIFA in December 1990 to propose a version of what would later become the backpass law.

Jeandupeux’s letter, which he passed on to The Athletic for this article, is one of many fascinating stories behind a rule change that transformed the way that football is played.

“It’s a dream to change the game. But it was only a dream,” Jeandupeux tells The Athletic from his home in Switzerland.

As well as talking to Jeandupeux, we have spoken to members of the monitoring team who were sent to Italy 31 years ago to report on FIFA’s backpass experiment and also a bizarre offside law that encouraged goal-hanging and was never seen again. “That was a catastrophe!” says Mario van der Ende, who refereed at the tournament.

Experienced figures inside football’s corridors of power told us about Sepp Blatter, the much-maligned former FIFA president, pretending to be a timewasting goalkeeper in meetings because he was so exasperated with those desperately dull passages of play. There is also a remarkable tale about a teacher at the Georgian National Academy of Sciences who initiated backpass experiments of his own in the old Soviet Union and was later credited with playing a part in the introduction of the new law.

Last but not least, there are the thoughts of the players, from the Premier League goalkeeper who was so uncomfortable with the new law that he ended up having an altercation with a ball boy, rugby tackling an opponent and being sent off, to the Nottingham Forest defender who thought he was being clever by dribbling back towards his own goal, putting his foot on the ball, lying down on the floor and heading it back to the keeper.

This is the story of the backpass rule.

Toto Schillaci’s emergence from the shadows, Roger Milla’s corner-flag celebrations and Paul Gascoigne’s tears — Italia ’90 provided some wonderful storylines and iconic images. What it struggled to deliver, though, was goals. Averaging 2.21 goals per game, Italia ’90 was the lowest-scoring World Cup in history.

To put it another way, Luciano Pavarotti was a lot better to listen to than the football was to watch, especially when it came to the World Cup final. “A dreadful advertisement for the game of football” is how West Germany’s ugly 1-0 victory over Argentina is described in FIFA’s 300-page technical report.

Generally, the football at Italia ’90 was negative and prosaic. Much was made of the fact that the Republic of Ireland goalkeeper Paddy Bonner held the ball for a total of six minutes against Egypt, although Blatter highlighted another group game, involving the United Arab Emirates and Colombia, in Simon Hart’s book World in Motion.

“Something is wrong in this game,” Blatter, who was FIFA’s general secretary at the time, recalled thinking to himself after watching the UAE repeatedly passing the ball back to their goalkeeper.

A highly controversial figure, Blatter was given a six-year ban from football in March last year following multiple breaches of FIFA’s ethics code. His reputation is in tatters now, yet there was a time when senior officials in the game saw good in Blatter.

“I’ve got to be fair to Blatter: he’s got many faults, as most of us are aware, but he was very strong on the laws of the game,” says George Cumming, who worked for the Scottish Football Association and FIFA after a career as both a professional footballer and a referee. “Blatter was very concerned about the tackle from behind. He overplayed it a bit, Marco van Basten was the name that was always quoted — he suffered from so many achilles injuries because of tackles from behind. But Blatter was also concerned about timewasting.”

Exactly what could be done to reduce timewasting was unclear in the immediate aftermath of the World Cup, but any law changes would need to go through the International Football Association Board (IFAB), which is made up of the four home nations — England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland — and FIFA.

William Campbell, who worked for the Irish FA for 38 years before standing down last summer, recalls Blatter making an “impassioned plea” at one of IFAB’s editorial committee meetings. “I remember it well because it really impressed me,” Campbell tells The Athletic.

“He got up from the table so that he could stand and mime the goalkeeper picking up the ball and getting it back and so on, and he was really animated about this. He was pretending to be a goalkeeper with the ball in his hands, bouncing it and moving to one side of the penalty area and then moving to the other side. He also had stats about the backpasses and how much time had been wasted. He said, ‘We need to do something to cut down the timewasting’.”

Daniel Jeandupeux provided a solution. A former Switzerland international who was in charge of the French club Caen in 1990, Jeandupeux thought deeply about the game. He watched the 1990 World Cup final through his fingers, despairing at all the fouling, theatrics and timewasting, and knew that something had to change.

Using data from a limited but ground-breaking analytics product called Top Score, Jeandupeux researched how long goalkeepers in Ligue 1 were holding the ball in their hands. The findings shocked him, not least because his own goalkeeper was as guilty as anyone.

Having already discussed his study with Walter Gagg, who was a close friend and head of FIFA’s technical committee at the time, Jeandupeux put the results of his research in writing, in a letter dated December 14, 1990, and shown (translated) below.

“My goalkeeper is a champion of timewasting,” Jeandupeux wrote. “During the first day of the championship against Nantes, he held the ball for 403 seconds, 42 per cent of my team’s time of possession.”

After going back over other matches, including occasions when Caen fell behind, Jeandupeux said, “This possession is obviously intended to kill the game, since when we conceded in the first 20 minutes, the time of possession (for the goalkeeper) didn’t exceed 27 per cent.”

The research forced people to listen. “The letter was very important because the numbers were right,” Jeandupeux tells The Athletic. “I was a coach and I had never before searched this situation in the numbers. I searched for things to win the games. But when I saw the World Cup final… there was nothing to see. I can’t even remember which team won because it was such a bad game.”

Jeandupeux did more than just provide FIFA with numbers. In his letter, he put forward several proposals aimed at reducing timewasting, including placing multiple footballs around the perimeter of the pitch and restricting the time that the goalkeeper could hold onto the ball. There was also another idea that would ultimately revolutionise the game.

“What’s more, he (the goalkeeper) is not allowed to pick the ball up with his hands if it comes back to him from a player (on the same team) who has just given him the ball,” Jeandupeux wrote.

The timing was perfect. The day before Jeandupeux sent his letter, Blatter had set up a committee named Task Force 2000, made up of distinguished former players and coaches. Their remit was to study the game and to look into ways to make it more enjoyable to watch. Jeandupeux had essentially done their work for them.

“We got this letter from Daniel, which came to me and a copy to Sepp, and we were discussing it,” Gagg, who left FIFA in 2016, tells The Athletic. “Daniel’s studies were totally significant. We said we have to bring this to our technical study team and also to this task force. The task force at this time was under the leadership of Lennart Johansson, the former UEFA president, and we had Michel Platini, Johan Cruyff, Bobby Charlton, Carlos Alberto Parreira — a team of about 20 people.”

Six months later, at the IFAB annual general board meeting, FIFA requested permission to carry out two experiments at the 1991 Under-17 World Championship:

LAW XI:

“To limit the offside rule to an area prescribed by a line to be drawn from the penalty area line which is parallel to the goal line in the opponents’ half of the field, to extend as far as the touchline on either side. A player who is not in this area cannot be declared offside.”

LAW XII:

“To prohibit the goalkeeper from retrieving the ball with his hands after it has been passed back from a teammate. If this rule is breached, the referee shall award an indirect free kick to the opposing team at the point where the goalkeeper touched the ball with his hands…”

Both experiments were given the green light to be trialled in Italy, where IFAB sent a monitoring team to observe and report back.

Curiously, it turns out that it was not the only backpass experiment that took place. In 1994, Sulkhan Iashvili, who was working as a teacher at the Georgian National Academy of Sciences, received a letter from FIFA, via the Georgia Football Federation (GFF), thanking him for “contributing directly to the realisation of this new (backpass) law, which has greatly contributed to the development of football worldwide”.

The letter (shown above) was passed to The Athletic a couple of years ago, and we were intrigued to find out the story behind it. Talking through George Mirashvili, the GFF’s translator, Iashvili explained that, as the head of the Dinamo Tbilisi supporters’ group, he had become frustrated that weaker opponents were resorting to so much timewasting, in particular by passing the ball back to the goalkeeper.

In a similar fashion to Jeandupeux, Iashvili carried out his own research and calculated the time being lost to backpasses. He wrote to FIFA in 1990 with his findings and proposed a ban on goalkeepers picking up the ball from one of their own players.

According to Iashvili, FIFA responded and said that his idea needed to be trialled by the GFF first. After talking to Nodar Akhalkatsi, the GFF president, Dinamo arranged a couple of friendly matches where they experimented with the backpass law. Recordings of the games were sent to FIFA, who then carried out their own official experiment in 1991, in Italy, where Kyle Campbell wrote his name into the history books…

“I picked up the ball and the referee immediately blew,” Campbell says, recalling the United States’ opening game at the Under-17 World Championship. “It was a second of confusion. But our coach had done a pretty good job of preparing us for a free-kick-type situation based on the backpass.

“The entire team came back and formed a wall on the goal line because we were within 10 yards of the goal, and we were coached that when they touched the ball on the indirect free kick, ‘Kyle, you’re going to charge and just throw yourself at the ball and the rest of the team will be a wall on the line’. That happened, I charged, the ball went beyond me and luckily one of our players on the line headed it away.”

By and large, the feedback on the backpass experiment in Italy was positive. However, the idea that it would lead to an increase in actual playing time turned out to be misplaced. Instead, there were a disproportionate number of throw-ins — more than 50 in some games — as goalkeepers and defenders resorted to kicking the ball out.

“The way that people play now has totally changed from when that rule first came into play,” Campbell adds. “Back in 1991, when we were experimenting with the rule, it was basically, ‘Can you clear the ball that comes back to you in one or two touches and not make a buffoon of yourself?’.”

As for the new offside law, which allowed players to stand on the edge of the opposition penalty area without fear of a flag being raised, it was a disaster. “The goalhanger was there!” Mario van der Ende, the Dutch official who refereed at the 1991 tournament, tells The Athletic, laughing. “I was saying to the (FIFA) committee at the time, ‘You will need marathon runners as referees (with this new offside law) because the field is so long’.”

Not surprisingly, the coaches at the tournament were unhappy with the two experiments, especially as they had played to a different set of rules during qualification for the finals. “My honest feeling is that they (FIFA) made the (offside) test on these youngsters only to have the test done — and then be able to refuse it,” Leif Sundell, the Swedish referee who also officiated in Italy in 1991, tells The Athletic.

Either way, Campbell, the US goalkeeper, came away with two clear conclusions. “I did not think the offside rule was the way forward for the game. But I did think the backpass rule was a good rule. It was intended to stop the timewasting. You used to be up 1-0, the goalkeeper would get the ball, you’d put someone at the top of the box on the left and the right, and you would roll the ball back and forth and pass it to the goalkeeper. It was really stupid, frankly. It killed a lot of time, it was horrible for people to watch, and it wasn’t really fun to do. The first thing the backpass rule did was completely eliminate that.”

IFAB and FIFA recognised all of that too. At IFAB’s 1992 AGM, at the Celtic Manor Hotel in Wales on 30 May, there was unanimous support for the backpass rule becoming part of the laws of the game, starting at the Olympics in Barcelona. The exact wording, however, still needed fine-tuning.

“I do remember standing — it’s always a square layout for these meetings — in the middle with a ball, explaining how different aspects of the backpass could affect the game,” says Cumming, who was part of the monitoring team in 1991. “Because FIFA’s proposal said that if a goalkeeper picks up the ball after it has been passed to them by a teammate, there will be an indirect free kick. But the definition of ‘pass’ wasn’t clear enough.

“I explained that if a player chests the ball back, that’s a skill. If a player heads the ball back, that’s a skill. So we got the text changed at that meeting to be a kick rather than a pass, and that was accepted.”

The ink had barely dried on that wording when news started to filter through that players and coaches were already finding clever ways to get around the law, in some cases by lying on the floor and heading the ball — something that Paris Saint-Germain’s Marco Verratti was punished for as recently as five years ago.

FIFA was forced to send out a circular in late July 1992 (shown below), saying that, “If, in the opinion of the referee, a player uses a deliberate trick in order to circumvent the amendment to Law XII, the player will be guilty of ungentlemanly conduct and will be punished accordingly.”

Brian Laws never got the memo. A week later, in the 1992 pre-season Makita tournament at Elland Road, Nottingham Forest were taking on Sampdoria when Laws decided to take his name into his own hands.

“I was dribbling the ball towards my goalkeeper and I was thinking, ‘If I pass it back to him, he’s just going to boot it up the field, but we need a breather’,” Laws told The Athletic.

“I knew there was nobody near me, so I got near to the 18-yard box, I put my foot on the ball and then leant down on the floor and headed it to the keeper while I was lying on the floor. In the rules, it said if you use your head, you’re all right. But the referee came over and booked me for ungentlemanly conduct. I would have thought I must have been one of the first to be booked for it. I couldn’t stop laughing!”

It is August 1992, there are nine minutes on the clock in the Charity Shield game at Wembley and John Lukic, Leeds United’s goalkeeper, has just been given the simplest of backpasses to deal with by Chris Fairclough.

“It goes back to the goalkeeper but he can’t pick it up because it was played with the feet,” Martin Tyler, the Sky Sports commentator, says, educating viewers.

Ronny Rosenthal, the Liverpool striker, makes a beeline for Lukic after he knocks the ball sideways with his first touch, but the Leeds goalkeeper still has time, and the whole pitch to aim at, as he prepares to kick upfield. Inexplicably, Lukic slices the ball into the stands.

“And there we have a talking point because Lukic can only bang the ball out of play,” Tyler adds.

“Andy, I know you have strong views against this change,” Tyler says, turning to Andy Gray, the summariser alongside him.

“I just think that is a perfect example of what people like myself, and the views that we have regarding… is that making the game any better when you see the goalkeeper under pressure like that, just lumping the ball out of play?” Gray asks. “I don’t think so.”

“Well, maybe he’ll pass it better as the season goes on,” replies Tyler.

Gray breaks into laughter.

That exchange was fairly typical of how the new backpass law was viewed in 1992. Pundits, managers, coaches and players — especially goalkeepers — were deeply sceptical, with many predicting that it would lead to more long balls and turn the game into a circus.

In truth, the opening weeks and months of the inaugural Premier League season fed into that narrative as goalkeepers routinely got themselves in a terrible tangle. A good first touch had never been that important for goalkeepers before and very few of them could confidently use their weaker foot. The latter was a problem for Sheffield United’s Simon Tracey, who was shown a red card after a calamitous chain of events at White Hart Lane that started with a backpass.

“When I was sent off at Tottenham, it was stupid,” Tracey tells The Athletic. “Because my left foot was so bad, I couldn’t even find the stand, I actually found the ball boy. And then all of a sudden I saw the ball boy was going to throw the ball on quite quickly and so I tried to stop that, which led to the referee sending me off for a second yellow card. That was because of my lack of technique.”

Tracey was far from alone in that respect. Bonner, the former Republic of Ireland goalkeeper, admitted that he was “horrified” by the rule change and went as far as to say that it ended his career.

“Everyone thought it (the backpass law) wouldn’t last,” Tracey adds. “I had my reservations at the time — it definitely made my game a lot worse and my value went down because I couldn’t use my left foot. But when you look back to how it was previously, and you see how much timewasting went on, it’s probably one of the best rules that has come in.”

It was not only individuals who struggled. Leeds, who had won the old First Division title in 1992, dropped like a stone the following season and finished 17th — interestingly, Howard Wilkinson, their manager, had been strongly opposed to the new backpass law. As for Nottingham Forest, they ended up rock bottom and were relegated from the Premier League.

“The backpass killed us,” Brian Laws says. “Whereas we were previously the dictators of pace in the game, whenever the ball went back to the keeper now, he was going to put it back up the field, so you were going to have to do a lot more running, and we didn’t cater for that. We didn’t change anything. But the opposition teams did. They were fitter, stronger than us in the last 15 minutes of games, and pushed us to one side. It was a key thing and by the time we realised, it was too late.”

Over time — and it did take time — coaches and players (that’s defenders as well as goalkeepers) learned to adapt. Specialist goalkeeper coaches were appointed, technical skills improved and tactics evolved. Playing back to the goalkeeper became a way of enticing the opposition press before passing through them, rather than a last resort that ended with a lump upfield — helped by the influence of managers such as Pep Guardiola.

“Back in the day, you were playing in goal because you were no good at playing out — they wouldn’t want to pass you the ball back,” Tony Roberts, the Wolverhampton Wanderers and Wales goalkeeper coach, tells The Athletic. “Now these boys have complete confidence in passing it back to, say, Ederson, Alisson, because they’re comfortable on the ball, and that only comes from daily training working on technique, being able to pass your way out under pressure, working out where your next option is. That doesn’t come by fluke.”

In fact, the onus is on goalkeepers to pick a pass as much as anyone else now. “But this is fantastic!” Zuberbuhler says, face beaming and sounding genuinely excited. “You are getting used massively now. I would love to be a goalkeeper now, I tell you. It’s fantastic. You are the key player.”

There is, of course, a balance to be stuck and there are concerns that is something that gets forgotten at times. “You’ve still got to be a goalkeeper,” says David Seaman, the former England international. “A lot of people focus on playing out from the back with your feet. We saw (Thibaut) Courtois in the Champions League final put on a display of goalkeeping that was fantastic, so it’s great to see that it’s not all about feet. Do your goalkeeping right.”

Zuberbuhler nods. “Shot-stopping is still the most important thing. No 1 from a goalkeeper is the expectation that you have to save balls, which I wanted to mention because it’s important. Many in the modern world are thinking only about the goalkeeper playing out, one-touch and two-touch. No, I want a goalkeeper still to save the ball.”

Kyle Campbell stopped wearing his gloves a long time ago. Now aged 47, the American’s playing days, which took him to Hungary at one stage, ended early after he decided to go to law school to pursue another career. The football memories have never left him though — especially that backpass.

Campbell smiles. “Sitting here reflecting on the rule change now, and the way that teams incorporate the goalkeeper into playing out from the back, it makes it the beautiful game,” he says. “It’s changed football so much for the better.”

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