Spiegel-online letter to the editor

I have been a successful professional player for 19 years and earn my money by betting on football matches. This means that over this time I have watched an average of about two live football matches a day on TV. My football knowledge, which I have acquired over the past thirty years (I am now 50 years old) by playing football myself and visiting numerous stadiums, including many smaller matches, I have combined with my mathematical knowledge (study of mathematics, retraining as a programmer) and my programming savvy to make football “calculable” within the bounds of possibility.
I am currently writing two books. One is about professional playing itself, where I biographically describe my career and the individual stages (early chess up to board 1 of the 1st Bundesliga, later successful in backgammon at numerous world championships) and also derive the developing knowledge and understanding of the connections between mathematics and successful playing – the main approach here is thinking in terms of probabilities.
On the side, however, I am writing a book about football itself. The competence, which is not only a prerequisite for successful playing, but also specifically about football, increases noticeably over the years. Unfortunately, as a thinking person (I playfully wipe away the presumption: I’m not talking about myself…), one’s attention is drawn to numerous abuses, which then make one think less about the mistakes of the players themselves (which the media always and without fail want to make us aware of), but rather of the reporters and – regrettably – also of the match officials. That this has a significant connection with the rules currently in use is not questionable for me.
For this reason, I have devoted a central part of my second work to the “Proposals for Rule Changes” (also the title of the chapter).
Although I expressly emphasise that football could easily be made more exciting and better, solely through the correct application of existing rules, I nevertheless have a few very simple suggestions to make as to how small things, as Mr Jeep suggests, could be manifested in the rules.
One of my suggestions, exactly analogous to Mr. Jeep’s most recent one, is this tiresome “escorting the ball out of bounds” by the defenders, which I wanted to “fix” exactly the same way: You are only in possession of the ball if you play, have played or intend to play the ball. Otherwise, the behaviour is “blocking”. Alternatively (but unnecessary for me), one could also proclaim “being in possession of the ball” by shielding the ball, and therefore award the corner/throw-in to the attackers.
As I said, my suggestion, and it seems more logical to me, would be that you are only in possession of the ball if you have also already played the ball. Otherwise, you “lock” the opponent and it has to be ruled foul play.
I could make all this available here from my abundant fund of what I have already written.
There are still many other issues.