I have been watching the Premier League all my life as my main source of consuming live football. I have never been less motivated to watch a match due to several team’s over reliance on long throw-ins and corners. They are playing a different sport.

I do not have a problem with direct free kicks because, right now—this could change with time—they mimmic a natural cross. There’s nothing natural about all of your tallest defenders attacking a cross, but at least it looks like football. There is a cross, and there is a header. There is minimal pushing, pulling, and no deliberate screening of players.

The contact you can make with your hands and arms on another player’s upper body during a long throw-in or corner turns the game into a new sport. It’s like a rugby scrum and a basketball game had a weird love child. In no other phase of play would you be allowed to place your hands on a player’s shoulders or chest and push or pull them, before or after the dead ball is kicked. You can’t even do that in basketball—the game football gets compared the most. During a pick and roll in basketball, the attacking player can’t move when they are performing a screen and they can’t use their hands to block the player, when they make contact with the defending player. That would be called a foul. In modern football today, we have pulling and pushing with several players moving and screening opposition. No fouls; all this wrestling is fair game.

For long throw-ins, it is simple. Why are teams forced to take short throw-ins quickly, but with long throw-ins you can collect the ball, look at it, inspect it, shine the ball with a towel to make it easier to grip, get all your defenders inside the box, and then, once everyone is in position, take the throw-in. That’s thirty seconds or more of time wasted.

The set piece does not end when the first player heads the ball. Everything thereafter can be rehearsed parts of the set piece.

Every part of a football game should mimic open play. All throw-ins should be treated equally and played quickly to get the ball back in play, and corners should look like a cross, not another sport. If we veer away from that, we will turn off many people, including myself. This is not the direction football should head into.

This isn’t an Arsenal or Chelsea problem, this is a league wide issue. A record 19% of the goals scored this season in the Premier League have come from a corner. 40% of all goals scored have come from a set piece, excluding penalties. 18 of the 20 teams are performing long throw-ins when the ball is in the final third. We are nine games into this season and eleven teams are sitting on four to eleven set-piece goals, some scoring more from dead ball situations than they are in open play. Five, ten, twenty years ago, eleven set-piece goals was an entire 38-game haul for one team during a full season.

I don’t blame teams for exploiting the system. As long as there are no rules to temper their effectiveness, it is fair game. Teams should be applauded for finding loopholes. We need to protect the game of football from the Premier League because they are no longer interested in playing football.

All of the space is gone.

Football has not been solved; positional play has hit a dead end. In positional play, you need space to occupy, space to attack. More money is piling into the league; man-to-man defensive systems are becoming more and more competent with each passing year. If you must occupy each zone, if you rely on pulling players out of position to open space, there is no more space on the pitch. They have run out of room on the game board; they have flipped the board over, and they are now playing hang-man instead of monopoly because they are getting beat by teams who are better at playing monopoly. The teams that are playing monopoly have the resources to quickly sign these players; that is the issue for the lesser teams who are exploiting the system now.

It is easier to walk players through a rehearsed set-piece drill in training than it is trying to solve problems in open play. Training that is crammed between a game on Saturday, then a game on Tuesday, then a game on Sunday, then another game on Wednesday, then a game on Saturday at 12:30PM. Premier League teams have the toughest competition from lower table teams when compared to other leagues, little rest, and they’re scrambling to find an edge. Well, the edge has been found. German, Spanish, and Italian teams can’t compete because you need to face this onslaught of set pieces week-in-and-week-out to have even a sliver of a chance at withstanding the deluge.

Why would you try to break down a team when you can just take it to the corner and hit it off a defender to win a corner or throw-in? Skip attacking a low block; skip trying to beat a team in open play altogether. Get a goal, dunk on the opposition’s defense with a rehearsed, easily reproducible play, defend, and then repeat.

It’s not even like you can allow the cross that is intended to deflect off a player and out for a throw-in or corner. If they get a shot on target, the goalkeeper is going to parry the ball out of play for a corner, or a defender is going to block the shot and it will go out for a corner.

This isn’t a cycle where teams will become better at defending throw-ins and corners. You can’t overcome physical pulling and pushing in the box, no matter how much you practice. This is an insurmountable advantage.

Excluding the obvious issues with the rules surrounding long throw-ins and corners, the advantage starts with recruitment. To compete, you need to sign a player who can take a long-throw or take a corner to gain that advantage back. If you do not have that player, you are left out. And then, once you have it, you can take advantage of the imbalance we have in the game with the physical touch inside the box.

This will not be viewed as the year of The Invincibles; this is the year of The Exploiters. And it is not one team; it is the majority who have the advantage, while the minority races to sign the players required to obtain that advantage. It is a perfect storm. The rules aren’t in place to level the playing field, and several teams have recruited to make this their primary focus.

This is the discovery of the atomic bomb.

There is a simple rule with nuclear war. If you do not have a nuke, get one. If asked to give up your nukes, never give up your nukes. If you don’t have players, plural, who can throw the ball 25 yards for a long throw-in or kick a ball with pinpoint accuracy for a corner, get them. If asked to give up those players, never give them up.

I fear this is going to impact the World Cup. International teams don’t have a ton of time to train together. Nothing is stopping them from focusing on set-pieces. You can be terrible in possession, the worst team in open play statistically, but as long as you can concede few goals and score at least one set piece per game, you have that advantage. The cheat codes are availble open source in the league. It could be a team we least except, or the obvious team, England and Declan Rice taking every single corner kick.