Here’s something far superior to penalty shoot-outs
This blog post has nothing to do with retirement. It’s about a thought that occurred to me (again) recently.
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The World Cup has reminded me of many things I enjoy about football (soccer to the rest of the world) – and one aspect that I think could be greatly improved. It has to do with matches that are tied after the scheduled 90 minutes have been completed, and it’s necessary (because of the knock-out phase of a tournament) for one team to be declared the winner and one the loser.
The background is that football is a very low-scoring game: typically a team scores one or two goals in a match. (So luck plays a much greater part than in higher-scoring sports – but that’s a subject for another time.) And naturally the question arises in a tied game: how to determine which team goes through to the next round of the contest.
The typical way is to keep playing, for a further 30 minutes. If one team is ahead at the end of the 120 minutes, that’s it. If they’re still tied, then what? One could keep playing, of course, until one team scores (“sudden death”), but after 120 minutes the players are totally exhausted. Or perhaps one might simply toss a coin (as in fact used to be done before 1970, though nobody remembers that today); but that’s not satisfactory, as it resolves the game in a non-football way.
What typically happens, in international matches, is that an entirely artificial situation is created, in which each team takes 5 penalty shots, and whichever team scores more of them is declared the winer. A tie after 5 penalty shots results in a succession of one more penalty to each team, until one team goes ahead. This is so artificial that the penalties aren’t counted as goals scored in the official records of the teams and the players involved; and in fact the game is officially recorded as a tie, for the teams’ statistical purposes.
Frankly, it’s pretty much a toss-up, once penalties are involved, but it feels (no matter how artificially) as if it’s a football-like resolution.
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I think there’s a better way. I’ve thought so for many years, but never tried to spread the word. When we discussed it one evening recently, a friend urged me to write up my idea, in the hope that perhaps someone might bring it to the attention of someone with influence – or whatever. So, here goes.
The idea came to me from following (ice) hockey. What happens there is that, if a game is tied at the end of normal time, there’s a 5-minute overtime period played, with each team using its goalkeeper and 3 other players, rather than the usual goalkeeper plus 5 other players; and it’s “sudden death”: the game ends after the first overtime goal. Having only three other players opens up the game enormously, and almost always results in one of the teams scoring within those 5 minutes. Only if neither side scores does the contest go to a penalty shoot-out.
Why not do something similar in football?
Instead of a full added 30 minutes, take a player off each team as the game goes into sudden death overtime. That will open up the game somewhat. And then, at the first stoppage after each successive 5 minutes (that is, the first stoppage after 5, then the first stoppage after 10, and so on), each team removes one more player. So the game goes from 11-a-side to 10, then 9, then 8, and so on. (Another friend suggests removing 2 players every 10 minutes. Sure – it’s worth experimenting with this take-players-off notion, to see what works best.) There’ll be a goal well before 30 minutes, I have no doubt!
And that resolves the game playing traditional football, rather than an artificial penalty shoot-out: much more natural and satisfying, and the goal should be credited (as arising out of natural play) to the player involved, and the game recorded as one side winning and the other side losing.
No result after 30 minutes of overtime (playing, by then, 5-a-side football on that mammoth pitch)? Sure, go ahead with those artificial penalties that aren’t officially counted.
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What do you think?
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Takeaway
I think football (soccer) should follow (ice) hockey and play overtime with fewer players, resulting almost certainly in a “sudden death” goal much more natural than a penalty shoot-out.
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8 Comments
I have written about retirement planning before and some of that material also relates to topics or issues that are being discussed here. Where relevant I draw on material from three sources: The Retirement Plan Solution (co-authored with Bob Collie and Matt Smith, published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2009), my foreword to Someday Rich (by Timothy Noonan and Matt Smith, also published by Wiley, 2012), and my occasional column The Art of Investment in the FT Money supplement of The Financial Times, published in the UK. I am grateful to the other authors and to The Financial Times for permission to use the material here.
I’ve often thought if you makes the goalposts a little bigger you would get more exciting, attacking soccer and more goals and more results.
Thanks. (Pro) It would work. (Con) A little bit inflexible.
Don, thank you for writing this up. It is a great idea. I can think of all sorts of interesting perversions of it, i.e., the coach of one team gets to choose the player on the other team (not the keeper) that is removed. But those are just perverse. I like the elegance of your idea.
Thanks.
Thanks. All ideas have pros and cons – like mine!
Would you allow substitutions in this overtime? Would there still be extra minutes (seconds)?
I’d certainly allow substitutions. I’d go to artificial penalties rather than prolonging the game again. My main point is just to suggest an alternative to the current system, not to say that there’s only one way to do it.
Wonderful suggestion Don. Anything would be better than seeing two teams playing out the clock and willing to roll the dice on penalty kicks. Now if you could just find an angle that would allow FIFA to sell more ad time I’m sure it would be universally accepted!
Thanks, Bob. More ads – great idea!