Fair?
Posted: Mon 10 July, 2006 Filed under: Thoughts, Weirdness 5 Comments »OK, before I get started on this one, bear in mind that I’m a self-confessed numpty when it comes to football, so I’m probably barking up entirely the wrong tree with this one…
Anyway – what I was thinking about, particularly in light of the end of the world cup, is why is the final result (assuming full-time and extra time have been completed) dependent on penalties? To me it seems actually quite unfair, basing it all on a “sudden death” kind of thing after two hours of play – particularly since the goals that have happened become irrelevant. (And before any smart-arse pops up with the comment, I know that the penalties thing only happens when it’s a draw, so perhaps the goals from the main match are now irrelevant – but bear with me on this, OK?)
So why does it go to penalties? Why not base the final victory on something that’s at least related to the game of the last two hours? Examples that spring to mind would be ball posession – that the team that’s had the most posession wins; or base it on fouls and/or dives – where the team with the lowest figure (either in the match, or in the tournament – which would be a nightmare of record-keeping, but would provoke rather less fouls, dives, and bookable offences, I suspect) wins at the end of it.
Surely those methods are fairer, or at least more relevant? To base the final result on penalties seems to be far more “luck of the draw”. Perhaps basing it on something match/statistic-based would be a bit of an anti-climax, I suppose – but it would still at least have a basic connection to the game they’ve been playing for the last 120 minutes…
I agree it’s an area that needs looking at, but…
Football is notoriously slow to change it’s rules. Most other team sports change rules every year, some quite radically, to try and improve things.
Anyway, you can’t use possession as that would lead to boring games where all each team would do is try and keep the ball. You need to try and encourage more goals and an attacking style.
Something like not allowing more than x people in the penalty box (per team) might work. It would still allow for long range shots, and give the strikers a little more freedom (add in always having to have one or two players in the opponents half maybe?).
But then, there are bigger problems. The attitudes of some “professionals” is shocking, and whilst every EVERY sport has ‘cheats’ and in a lot of sports it’s tolerated, football is the most blatant.
I say add another referee to the pitch, but that’s cost-prohibitive.
Ohh and you can’t use fouls/dives either, then you just get more people trying to cheat and win fouls.
Final suggestion – after extra time, start removing one player from each time, every 3 minutes until someone scores. Even if it takes things down to a 3 on 3 it would still make for a goal… hell a 1 on 1 could be fascinating!
Err… except a 1 on 1 would reduce the entire tournament of ‘teams’ to two individuals. Not very fair.
Scrap that one, or maybe stop at 5-a-side, in fact that might work. Like Rugby 7s, they always end up with higher than average scores, despite playing for a shorter time.
I think that if it is still undecided after extra time, the match should just be declared a draw. Neither team outclassed the opposition sufficiently to score more goals. Therefore, neither deserves the World Cup.
In the case of a match at an earlier (non-league) stage of the tournament resulting in a draw after extra time, neither team should progress to the next round, and their would-be opponent (if there is one) wins by default.
Yes, I am aware that this means that it would be possible for no teams to qualify for the final. But I don’t really care. Even the players are hooligans nowadays, so they can all go to hell.
I hate penalties! Sorry I can’t be more constructive.
I would imagine it would be damned difficult to reach an agreement of which particular system would be applied – fair play? possession? Also, penalties is at least a spectacle.
I am a fan of the silver goal. Basically, they play fifteen minutes of extra time. If one team is ahead, they win. Otherwise they play a further fifteen minutes. In theory, this could go on ad infiniyum – survival of the fittest – but when it has been applied, it goes to penalties after 30 minutes. So, as it only takes a minute to score a goal, it’s not always a game of two halves.
In my view penalties are the least worst basis to resolve it at that point. Back in history it would be decided on the toss of a coin, which in my view is horrendously unfair. At least penalties test a couple of aspects of footballing skills.
End of the day, it’s not always the best team that is over the moon, and no one remembers who comes second