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A Whole New Ball Game

‘The back-pass law is the best rule change ever – it has changed the game.’

Peter Schmeichel

We are constantly reminded that ‘football didn’t start in 1992’ in response to Premier League-centric historical records, but 1992 effectively marked the beginning of modern football. It was the beginning of a new, exciting, more entertaining era of the game, the watershed moment that prompted sweeping changes to create a more fast-paced, technically proficient sport.

However, it had absolutely nothing to do with the formation of the Premier League.

The introduction of the back-pass law in 1992 had a transformative effect upon football. Not since 1925 – when the offside law was altered so that only two opponents, rather than three, needed to be goalside of an attacker – had a law change been so effective at improving the spectacle of the world’s most popular sport. There have been minor alterations to the Laws of the Game during the Premier League era: different interpretations regarding offside, stricter laws governing tackles, revisions to kick-off. But 1992 was literally a game-changer.

The law change was simple. Previously, goalkeepers were allowed to use their hands if the ball was deliberately kicked to them by a teammate. Now, they were not. They could still handle the ball if a teammate headed, chested or even kneed it back, and throw-ins back to the goalkeeper could be picked up until 1997, but goalkeepers were forced to use their feet more than ever before, effectively becoming part of passing moves.

There was an extremely good reason for the law change. Hitherto, teams could time waste infuriatingly when leading matches; the goalkeeper would roll the ball out, the defenders would retain possession until an opponent challenged, then return the ball to the goalkeeper, who would pick it up and restart the process. It was often very tedious, and in hindsight it’s incredible that any team ever contrived to lose a lead. The ultimate example came in the dying seconds of Rangers’ European Cup first round tie against Dynamo Kiev in 1987. With Rangers 2–1 ahead on aggregate and building an attacking move, midfielder Graeme Souness received the ball midway inside the opposition half, immediately turned towards his own goal and thumped a 70-yard backward ball to his goalkeeper Chris Woods. Souness, incidentally, would later suffer from the back-pass change more than most.

Examples of negative play became particularly obvious at the 1990 World Cup, a tournament so dreadfully negative that FIFA felt compelled to take action. The new law came into effect two years later, in time for the inaugural Premier League campaign.

While some managers, like Luton Town’s David Pleat, spoke in favour of the change, there was a significant backlash from most top-flight managers, including the last two title-winning bosses. ‘I don’t think this is going to enhance the game at all,’ complained Arsenal’s George Graham, while Howard Wilkinson, who had taken Leeds United to the final pre-Premier League title in 1991/92, suggested the new laws would simply encourage long-ball football. ‘If the new rule is the authorities’ idea of how to foster better football, then the experiment will prove counter-productive,’ he declared. ‘The new ruling will be manna from heaven to a coach working with his long-ball side.’

Wilkinson predicted teams would concentrate on pumping long balls in behind the opposition and use a ‘goalie-blocker’, lingering in an offside position, to intercept potential back-passes from defenders to the goalkeeper’s feet, forcing them to hack the ball into touch instead. ‘FIFA have inadvertently encouraged more long-ball football,’ he maintained. ‘This isn’t a mad, scientific nightmare, this is the reality as stipulated by the overlords of the world game.’ Wilkinson’s view, that route one football would become dominant, found support from many managerial colleagues.

But the back-pass law served its initial purpose, and teams were no longer able to time waste so blatantly. Wilkinson’s predictions about long-ball football weren’t entirely inaccurate immediately following the law change – Leeds’s matches in a pre-season friendly tournament against Stuttgart and Sampdoria were notable for the opposition repeatedly playing hopeful balls in behind the Leeds defence, hoping for errors – but he failed to foresee how goalkeepers and defenders would adjust and gradually become comfortable in possession, creating a more technically advanced sport.

There were significant knock-on effects. Teams had a greater incentive to press in advanced positions, forcing defenders into mistakes, and managers were less inclined to play stiflingly aggressive defensive lines, because covering the space in behind now involved playing out of trouble. As a result the game became stretched, which created more room in midfield. Arguably the biggest change was in the speed of matches – players had previously become accustomed to breaks in play while goalkeepers held onto the ball. Suddenly the action had become non-stop.

These developments, the consequence of one simple law change, played into the hands of the Premier League, a division created specifically to provide televisual entertainment. Sky Sports introduced plenty of innovations, including a simple idea that has become universally established: displaying the score and clock on the top-left of the screen. Other Sky gimmicks were less successful: pre-match firework displays were scrapped after a stray rocket was launched out of The Dell and into a nearby petrol station, while the use of cheerleaders was short-lived, possibly after concerns from the presenter over their understanding of the offside rule. But none of this artificial razzmatazz was as crucial as the back-pass law in making the Premier League a fantastic show, and Sky were hugely fortunate that world football took an enormous step forward ahead of 1992/93. Without this significant improvement in the spectacle of matches, the Premier League wouldn’t have developed into the multi-billion-pound product it is today.

While supporters quickly realised the benefit of the back-pass change, many players found themselves exposed. The impact was first noticed in pre-season, when Manchester City goalkeeper Andy Dibble suffered a broken leg in a friendly against a League of Ireland XI, struck by sudden indecision as a slow back-pass approached, eventually attempting to tackle the opposition striker. ‘I wasn’t sure whether to kick the ball or pick it up,’ Dibble complained, describing himself as ‘the first victim’ of the law. However, defenders struggled more than keepers, and the Premier League’s opening day, 15 August 1992, was a comedy of errors.

Fourteen minutes into Leeds’s 2–1 victory over Wimbledon, Dons right-back Roger Joseph panicked inside his own penalty box, caught in two minds – should he pass back to goalkeeper Hans Segers or simply clear the ball? Eventually he did neither, scuffing the ball barely two yards, allowing Leeds’s Lee Chapman to pounce – and presumably leaving Leeds manager Wilkinson unsure whether he should celebrate or ruefully shake his head at the ‘reality as stipulated by the overlords of the world game’. Down at Highbury, Norwich recovered from 2–0 down to defeat Arsenal 4–2, a victory secured with a classic example of back-pass confusion. Norwich launched a high pass into the opposition half, forcing Arsenal captain Tony Adams to deal with a bouncing ball. He nervously glanced back to his goalkeeper, realised David Seaman didn’t want the ball, so instead attempted a square pass to centre-back partner Steve Bould. But Adams missed the ball completely and stumbled, allowing Mark Robins to steal in and chip Seaman, scoring the goal that ensured Norwich were the Premier League’s first-ever leaders.

Both goals in Chelsea’s 1–1 draw with Oldham at Stamford Bridge were related to the back-pass law: Oldham centre-back Ian Marshall, troubled by his inability to play the ball back to his keeper, slipped when attempting to control a long ball and allowed Mick Harford to open the scoring. But then Chelsea goalkeeper Dave Beasant, having received the ball from a defender, scuffed his kick, allowing Nick Henry to equalise. The new rules were causing chaos.

There was also a ‘positive’ goal scored from the back-pass rule, however. Sheffield United’s Brian Deane had headed the Premier League’s opening goal against Manchester United, then scored another from the penalty spot. This second arose because Blades midfielder John Gannon looked set to play a back-pass, saw an opponent making a run to intercept his potential pass (although he wasn’t quite a ‘goalie-blocker’) and so turned his way out of danger before playing a left-footed pass into the channel. Striker Alan Cork raced onto it, was tripped by Gary Pallister, and Deane converted the penalty. There were just seven seconds from Gannon’s turn until the penalty award – without the new law, the ball would still have been in the goalkeeper’s hands at the opposite end.

Compilers of ‘football’s funniest gaffes’ VHS tapes must have been delighted. The most comical error came in early September at Tottenham, and resulted in the dismissal of Sheffield United goalkeeper Simon Tracey. He’d already been booked for handling the ball outside the box, and then, when presented with a back-pass in the second half, panicked. He was closed down quickly by Spurs’ Paul Allen, and proceeded to dribble the ball sideways, taking it directly out of play for a Tottenham throw. When Tracey tried to retrieve the ball from next to the advertising hoardings to prevent Spurs taking the throw, a quick-thinking ball boy snatched it away, chucked it to Spurs sub Andy Gray, which prompted Tracey to rugby-tackle Gray to the floor. He was dismissed. Blades manager Dave Bassett wasn’t impressed. ‘He’s got the brains of a rocking-horse – and I told him so.’

This was not simply an English phenomenon, of course, and there were similar problems across Europe. North of the border, Rangers opened the scoring in October’s Scottish League Cup Final when Aberdeen goalkeeper Theo Snelders bizarrely chested a wayward clearance from a teammate straight into the path of a grateful Stuart McCall. It wasn’t an intentional back-pass anyway, and wouldn’t have been penalised, but Snelders was clearly unaware of the regulations and was left screaming at his defenders, ‘I can’t pick it up!’ The biggest impact came in Italy. Serie A was traditionally Europe’s most defensive division, and following goals-per-game averages of 2.11, 2.24, 2.29 and 2.27 in the four seasons before 1992/93 it suddenly jumped to 2.80, an unprecedented rise. The Premier League didn’t witness such a surge, rising from 2.52 in the final old First Division season to 2.65 in the opening Premier League campaign, but the back-pass law clearly affected the nature of the division, with certain teams particularly struggling.

The most famous victims were Liverpool. Many have linked their inability to win a Premier League title, having dominated the 1970s and 1980s, to the introduction of the back-pass law. In reality they finished sixth in both the final First Division season and the first Premier League season, but Liverpool’s players admit it affected them badly. ‘It was constantly in your mind as a defender – you can’t play the ball back,’ remembered defender Nick Tanner. ‘Previously, Liverpool would just kill the game off. We’d be 1–0 up, play the ball back to Bruce Grobbelaar. He’d bounce the ball a bit, Phil Neal would drop off, and Bruce would roll it out to him. That all stopped.’ Their manager during this period was Souness – the man responsible for the back-pass to end all back-passes.

Arsenal also suffered. They were the bookmakers’ title favourites, having scored the most goals in the top flight during 1991/92, but they struggled to build play from deep and scored the fewest goals during 1992/93, underlining the extent of the back-pass change. However, they adapted well defensively and remained an excellent side in knockout competitions, winning the League Cup and FA Cup – both, coincidentally, with 2–1 victories over Sheffield Wednesday.

But the biggest losers, significantly, were a very direct side – Wilkinson’s Leeds. Having triumphed the previous season, they slipped backwards alarmingly and finished 17th in the Premier League’s inaugural campaign, failing to win away all season. Considering that Wilkinson predicted route one football would prosper under the new regulations, it was ironic that his own players suffered precisely because they could no longer play that way. Goalkeeper John Lukic became the first Premier League goalkeeper to be penalised for handling a back-pass, from centre-back Chris Whyte – whom Wilkinson had rated as the division’s best centre-back in the previous campaign but who struggled considerably with modern football. ‘The back-pass law affected us particularly,’ midfielder Gary Speed later admitted. ‘The centre-backs used to stroke the ball back to the goalkeeper, and John Lukic used to launch it up to me and Lee Chapman. Suddenly we weren’t allowed to play that way anymore.’

Fellow midfielder Steve Hodge agreed. ‘Previously John Lukic would hold the ball and he’d launch it to us high up the pitch,’ he explained. ‘Now, Lukic would have to launch it from the floor and the ball wasn’t going far enough down the pitch. We were much less of a threat because the ball wasn’t landing or being flicked to the edge of our opponents’ area, it was bobbling around in the midfield. Also, teams would now really push up and made Lukic kick it quickly.’ It’s notable how much emphasis was placed upon the simple concept of how far the goalkeeper could kick, indicating the accepted method of distribution at the time.

Nottingham Forest also paid a heavy price for the new regulations, finishing bottom. Legendary manager Brian Clough had other problems by this stage, particularly his alcoholism, which, as he later admitted, clouded his judgement significantly. But his side’s style of football didn’t suit modern football, as Gary Bannister outlined. ‘Where we’ve suffered is when we’ve had the ball, we’ve played it back to Mark Crossley and he has cleared it,’ he said. ‘On most occasions the ball has come straight back at us, putting us under pressure. Mark having to hump the ball up the field has not helped us at all. Last season, a back-pass would have kept us possession and Stuart Pearce, Brian Laws or Gary Charles would have picked the ball up from the keeper to start us off again.’

Pearce, slightly surprisingly for a regular set-piece taker, looked particularly nervous when forced to play out and was responsible for the most famous misplaced back-pass of this era. After eight seconds of a November 1993 World Cup qualifier against minnows San Marino, he underhit the ball towards David Seaman, allowing Davide Gualtieri to give San Marino a shock 1–0 lead over England, who nevertheless won 7–1. That match was also the final England appearance for Pearce’s ex-Forest teammate Des Walker. He’d raced to 59 caps in the space of five years and was described as ‘the outfielder England manager Graham Taylor can least afford to lose’ in the Guardian a year earlier. But Walker discovered his talents no longer suited the modern game, and his England career was over at the age of 27. As Harry Redknapp later said, ‘When they did away with the back-pass in 1992 it made a huge dent in Des’s game. He used his speed to nip in front of the striker, mop up the ball and knock it back for the goalkeeper to pick up … suddenly, he was being required to play his way out of trouble, and that wasn’t his style at all.’

Indeed, one of the notable features of the early Premier League seasons – in line with Wilkinson’s prediction – was the frequent sight of defenders, when chasing long balls back towards their own goal, simply hacking the ball out of play to concede a throw-in. ‘I’ve told the players, “If you’re in doubt, kick it out,”’ said Coventry manager Bobby Gould. ‘“Stop fannying about and put it in Row Z.”’ It’s no coincidence that the first PFA Player of the Year during the Premier League era was Paul McGrath, the Aston Villa centre-back who played the ball comfortably with both feet. No other defender adjusted so impressively to the new law, and the Irishman became the template for the modern centre-back, as managers increasingly required ball-playing defenders rather than old-fashioned cloggers. A player like Rio Ferdinand, for example, would have been a midfielder rather than a centre-back were it not for the back-pass change.

Inevitably, the role of goalkeepers changed enormously. It was the first time that they had been forced to adjust since the 1912 law change that ruled they could handle only inside the penalty box rather than in the entirety of their own half. Goalkeepers, rightly famous for moaning, were outraged. ‘The new rule is making a mockery of my profession,’ complained Alan Hodgkinson, the ex-England shotstopper who became renowned as the country’s first specialist goalkeeping coach. ‘I know people will assume I’m biased but I can’t see the value of setting up goalkeepers so they look foolish. There’s not one who hasn’t been caught out. Is that good for the game? You have to remember that keepers have spent 20 years learning to catch the ball. It’s second nature to them. It’s not easy to adjust.’ Tough luck. The rules were here to stay, and goalkeepers were forced to spend long training sessions practising an entirely new skill – kicking a moving ball. The goalkeeper, football’s most specialised position, needed to become more of an all-rounder.

One of Hodgkinson’s key achievements was recommending Peter Schmeichel to Manchester United manager Alex Ferguson, before acting as the Dane’s coach. Schmeichel would define goalkeeping during this period, and was the only Premier League player who was the world’s greatest in his position. He was physically imposing, capable of tremendous close-range reaction stops and a master of the double save, springing up quickly to thwart rebounds. Schmeichel’s approach wasn’t textbook, and his positioning wasn’t as flawless as Arsenal’s Seaman, his goalkeeping rival of the 1990s. The Arsenal shotstopper was his opposite: quiet, understated and solid, whereas Schmeichel was loud, bold and unpredictable. Schmeichel introduced English football to the ‘starjump’ save – where he would spread arms and legs while leaping towards a striker – having borrowed it from handball, which Schmeichel played regularly as a teenager. ‘A goalkeeper is not a footballer, a goalkeeper is a handball player,’ former Manchester City manager Malcolm Allison declared in the 1960s. For Schmeichel, that was literally true.

Schmeichel had benefited heavily from the pre-back-pass situation. He started the Premier League era on a completely unexpected high, having won Euro 92 with Denmark – who hadn’t even qualified for the tournament initially, but were handed a late reprieve when civil war forced Yugoslavia to withdraw. In the last major tournament before the back-pass change, Denmark demonstrated why reform was desperately required, with centre-back Lars Olsen continually knocking balls back to Schmeichel to pick up, an approach that gradually spread to the rest of the side. The second half of the final, a 2–0 victory over Germany, featured particularly infuriating examples of time wasting. With five minutes remaining, Danish forward Flemming Povlsen collected the ball midway inside his own half, dribbled determinedly towards the opposition goal, but was tripped on the halfway line. He picked himself up, dusted himself down, then turned around and fired the ball 50 yards back to Schmeichel. ‘Every time we got into the German half and couldn’t find someone to pass to, players would turn around and pass to me, and I would pick it up,’ Schmeichel later recalled somewhat sheepishly. ‘How can you win football matches like that?!’