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Rethinking The Game (RTG) is a series of blog posts on changing minor aspects of the game of football.  You may wish to read the introduction to the series if you missed it.

Rethinking The Shootout Index: [Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3] [Part 4] [Part 5]

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The first part of this series introduced the basic problem with penalty shootouts - that they are essentially random tie-breakers that don’t reward football skill.  The second part backed-up that statement with some hard numbers from the FA Cup.  Even teams in a higher league don’t enjoy an advantage in the shootout.

Now we will look at why this is a problem.

Firstly, it renders the ultimate result to be somewhat unsatisfactory, both for the winner and the loser. The winners don’t feel like they really won, and the losers feel like they were cheated out of a result.

Speaking as an England fan, I don’t consider their exits in several recent tournaments to be actual, proper defeats.

• Knocked-out by Germany in the 1990 World Cup.
• Knocked-out by Germany in the 1996 European Championships.
• Knocked-out by Argentina in the 1998 World Cup.
• Knocked-out by Portugal  in the 2004 European Championships and the 2006 World Cup.

By contrast, there was some perverse satisfaction to be beaten by Brazil in the 2002 World Cup.  It was a stand-up fight, they were the better team, Ronaldinho played a blinder, and they won.

Brazil didn’t just knock England out, they beat them.  And that’s what football should be about.

The problem is just as bad for the winners, especially when a shootout is needed to settle a final.  This seems to happen distressingly often.  Four out of the last eight Champions League finals have been settled by penalties.  So have two of the last four World Cup finals.

You’ll often find football fans questioning the legitimacy of such results.  The winner of the shoot-out isn’t recognized to be the better team and their glory is tainted because of this.

Liverpool’s victory over Milan is a case in point.  Despite their amazing comeback, I think few people actually considered Liverpool to be the better team.

It’s almost as if some tournaments end up with two winners - or no winners - which utterly defeats the point of the exercise.

The second major problem with the random nature of penalties is that they encourage the weaker team to play defensively, either in the closing stages of the game or even throughout the entire match.  If their best chance of winning the game is through the shoot-out, why not minimize the risk of losing the game in normal time?  It’s a ruthless approach but it has been used time and time again with success.

Red Star Belgrade defeated Marseille with penalties in the 1991 European Cup final after a goalless game.  Their manager later revealed that playing for penalties was a deliberate ploy.

“We realised we could not really beat Marseille unless they made a mistake, so I told my players to be patient and to wait for penalties,” said Ljupko Petrović. “We practised penalties a lot in our closed training session on Tuesday and it paid off.”

That is just one overt example.  We all know we have seen it happen, time and time again.  Maybe it’s not the entire match, but one reason why extra-time can be so dull is that usually at least one team has stopped trying to score.

The fans are the ultimate losers here.  They have taken time off work to attend the big final, spent money on flights and hotels, camped out for tickets, paid ticket touts…all to see a 4-5-1 formation and a team barely willing to venture out of their own half.

This isn’t how it was meant to be.  On the face of it, the shootout should be the ultimate test of football skill.  Mano-a-mano with nowhere to hide.  A duel to the death.

How did it end up ruining cup finals and encouraging negative football?  That will be the subject of the next post in the series.

[Link to Part 4]

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