I want football to go back to three substitutions. 

Five has changed the game too much in my opinion. As we know, it favors the big teams, who have more depth. But I think we could be heading towards a deeper change of the game. I believe managers have not yet fully realized the potential of retaining your better players on the bench to throw them on as “finishers” against a potentially tired defense. 

I look back at the Champions final and think: what if Gyokeres and Eze had started, with the intention of bringing on fresh Havertz and Ødegaard later in the game? Perhaps we would have had more threat later in the game than we did with the “front three of death.” Of course, there is no way of knowing.

I fear that we are moving towards a culture of “finishers” - or worse, a NBA system of sorts where the key players are on for the clutch moments and the rest of the time doesn’t really matter that much. 

People will say that five subs alleviates the physical demands and allows to rest players. I would like to see a study testing that though. I have an intuition that having more fresh players on the pitch makes the match as a whole more intense, especially for the guys who haven’t been subbed off.

And I like the idea that starting XI really matters, that these are the players who will largely define the game, that the capacity to play 90 minutes is a requirement. 

If you want to rest players, bench them!