I love football, or soccer if anyone from the USA ever reads this, and I love the NFL too. They’re very different sports, obviously. One is fluid, messy, emotional and often allergic to common sense. The other stops every 11 seconds so a committee of enormous men can discuss angles, coverage and whether someone’s knee brushed the turf.
But there are still a few things football could borrow from the NFL, and I don’t just mean cheerleaders, fireworks and calling every half-decent tackle a “defensive statement”. Some of the NFL’s systems are genuinely better than ours, especially around player safety, referee communication and competitive balance.
The big question is which ideas football should actually test, and which ones are lovely in theory but would have the Premier League’s lawyers quietly hiding under the table.
1. Independent concussion authority
This is the obvious one. Football has improved slightly with permanent concussion substitutes, but the on-pitch assessment still feels flawed. The player wants to stay on. The manager wants their best players available. The crowd wants the game moving. Even the team doctor, however professional they are, is still operating inside that club environment.
The NFL has independent neurotrauma consultants and spotters who can intervene. That’s the important bit. Someone outside the team has the authority to say, “No, this player needs assessing properly.” Football should copy that principle as closely as possible.
For me, this should be tested first. It’s not about entertainment, tradition, money or competitive advantage. It’s about basic duty of care. If a player has taken a heavy blow to the head, they shouldn’t be the one effectively deciding whether they’re fine to carry on. That decision should be removed from the player, the manager and the match situation completely.
2. Proper live referee explanations
This is another easy win. In the NFL, when a decision is reviewed or a penalty is called, the referee switches on a microphone and explains the ruling to the stadium and TV audience. It isn’t perfect, but at least everyone knows what has happened.
Football, by comparison, still has far too much awkward silence. Fans stand there staring at a big screen while VAR checks something for three minutes, with no clear idea what specific contact, handball, offside line, shirt pull or toenail is being examined.
The Premier League has started moving towards more communication, but it still needs to go further. We don’t need a full courtroom judgement from the referee, just a simple explanation: what was checked, what the decision is, and why. That alone would make VAR feel less like a mysterious bunker making football worse from a secret location.
3. A stronger set-piece foul rule
This is where I think football could borrow from the NFL’s “eyes on the ball” idea, although not in a direct copy-and-paste way because it simply wouldn't work.
In the NFL, defenders can get into trouble if they’re not playing the ball and are simply interfering with the receiver. Football has a similar problem at corners and free kicks. Too many defenders are not even pretending to look at the ball. They’re often facing the opposing player, grabbing shirts, pinning arms, blocking runs and wrestling them like they’re trying to win a pub car park fight.
Football doesn’t need to become completely non-contact (my missus will always tell you "it's a contact sport!"), because that would be dreadful. But it could enforce one simple idea more clearly: if a defender makes no genuine attempt to play the ball, they are looking directly into the opponents face and is clearly holding, dragging or blocking an opponent, it’s a foul.
The key word is consistency. Enforce it properly for the first six weeks of a season and players would adapt. They always do once they realise the referee is actually going to give it.
4. The “uncatchable ball” idea
This one is trickier, but I still think there’s something in it.
In the NFL, pass interference can’t be called if the ball is clearly uncatchable. Football could use a similar principle for some penalty decisions. Right now, you can get situations where an attacker is slightly tripped in the box, but the ball is flying miles over their head or heading harmlessly away from goal, or heading over the line with no chance of getting to it; technically it might be a foul, but it hasn’t really affected the play.
I’m not saying dangerous tackles should be ignored just because the ball has gone. That would be ridiculous. But for those soft penalties where there’s minimal contact and the player had no realistic chance of reaching the ball anyway, football needs a bit more common sense.
The problem is wording it. “Uncatchable” works in American football because the pass has a specific intended receiver and a clear flight path. In football, the ball is looser, messier and a little more chaotic. You’d need something like a “material impact” test, where the foul has to meaningfully affect the player’s ability to challenge for the ball.
It would need a trial first, probably in a cup competition or youth tournament, because otherwise VAR would find a way to turn it into another bloody weekly argument.
5. A hard spending cap
This is the one that sounds brilliant until you remember football is not a closed American league.
The NFL has a hard salary cap, meaning every team has the same maximum amount to spend on players. In theory, that creates a more level playing field. The Premier League’s current direction, with squad cost rules linked to club revenue, still favours the richest clubs. A club making £700m can spend much more than a club making £150m. That isn’t really equality, it’s just a tidier version of the same imbalance.
A hard cap in English football would be fascinating. Suddenly scouting, coaching and tactical intelligence would matter more than who has the deepest pockets. It would also stop the biggest clubs hoovering up talent simply because they can.
But the problems are huge. Promotion and relegation make it complicated. European competition makes it even harder. Then you’ve got Saudi Arabia, Spain, Germany, Italy and the wider global market. Unless UEFA or FIFA introduced something broader, the Premier League doing it alone could end up weakening itself.
So while I like the idea, I don’t think it’s the 1st thing football should test. It’s morally attractive, but structurally brutal.
6. A shared merchandise pot
This is probably the idea I like most emotionally, even if I know it’s one of the least likely to happen.
The NFL’s national revenue model is one of the reasons a team like Green Bay can still compete with teams from much bigger markets. Green Bay, Wisconsin has a population of around 100,000, yet the Packers remain one of the NFL’s great teams. That sort of thing is part of the NFL’s charm.
In the Premier League, broadcast money is split relatively evenly, but commercial revenue is still very much a free-for-all. Shirt sales, sponsorships, global partnerships, official noodle partners, official tyre partners, official mattress partners... the big clubs can turn their global reach into an enormous financial advantage.
A shared merchandise pot would change that. It would force the biggest clubs to subsidise the rest of the league and help close the gap. The romantic part of me loves that. The league is only interesting because all 20 clubs exist, so all 20 clubs should share more of the upside.
But let’s be honest, the Big Six would absolutely hate it. They’d probably try to copy the Dallas Cowboys model and carve themselves out of the collective agreement. Or they’d find some wonderfully slippery workaround where Manchester United’s third kit pyjamas, Liverpool dog beds, Arsenal golf towels and Chelsea-branded air fryers somehow don’t count as club merchandise.
You can almost hear the statement now:
“We fully support collective growth, but our international lifestyle and heritage apparel partnerships sit outside the domestic football merchandise framework.”
Which is a very expensive way of saying, “No, you can’t have our money.”
A more realistic version might be a central commercial levy. Clubs could keep most of their own merchandise income, but a small percentage of certain commercial categories could go into a fund for academy football, women’s teams, lower-league support or away ticket subsidies. It wouldn’t be as dramatic as a fully shared pot, but it might actually stand a chance.
So which ideas should football actually test?
If I had to rank them, I’d go like this:
- Independent concussion authority – this should happen as soon as possible.
- Live referee explanations – simple, sensible and long overdue.
- Stricter set-piece holding rules – stop the wrestling and make defenders actually defend.
- A material-impact penalty rule – worth testing, but it needs careful wording.
- A hard spending cap – great in theory, very difficult in reality.
- A shared merchandise pot – lovely football socialism, but the Big Six would barricade the doors.
The health of players and the enjoyment of the game have to come first. That sounds obvious, but football has a long history of treating obvious things as if they need 14 committees, three pilot schemes and a leaked report before anyone can act.
Independent concussion checks and better referee communication don’t require football to rip up its entire financial structure. They just require the people running the game to admit that the NFL, for all its flaws, has got a few things right.
The money stuff is harder. I’d love a Premier League where smaller clubs had more of a fighting chance, and where the richest teams couldn’t simply outspend everyone forever. But the realistic starting point is not a full NFL-style revolution. It’s player safety, clearer decisions, and a version of the game that doesn’t leave match-going fans completely in the dark.
Start there. Then we can come back for the Manchester United pyjamas and Chelsea air fryers.
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