Replace them with trash talking contests…
How would that even work? Just get rid of elimination rounds?
You could just play a replay match, like they do in the FA cup. Everyone would hate that, but what’re you gonna do, everybody hates everything.
I don’t really know how that works – what if the replay is a draw?
Extra time then PKs. Oops, sorry, kicks from the spot, guv. In this new paradigm I suppose you could just play another replay.
No, we have to get rid of penalties (which is a term I just heard one of the announcers use during this England/Denmark match).
BTW, I love this idea. Maybe it’s something the US team could excel at, assuming it would be in English.
Since there is no penalty (practically speaking) for the prevalent practice of flopping in order to draw a penalty, I propose that if a player is knocked or falls to the ground and cannot (or will not) get up within 10 seconds or so, they must come out of the game for a minimum of 10 minutes, during which time one or more independent medical observers will evaluate them for concussion or other injury.*
Thus, the “penalty” imposed for flopping would be that a team would be deprived of the services of a possibly valuable player for 10 minutes, which might discourage flopping to a degree.
*one gets cynical after repeatedly seeing players who, following minimal contact with someone on the opposing team collapse to the turf in a heap, unmoving, but after a minute are up and darting about as if nothing had happened.
I agree that diving is a problem, and I think that red cards should be issued post-match if there’s embellishment. Women’s soccer is much better about this.
However, I think that conversation is better in another thread.
Well I’m biased… 
Love it. I think NBA players are known to do some excellent trash talking – maybe Team USA soccer could put a few on the bench, only to be brought on in the trash-talking phase.
“tie resolution experts”
Not my problem. 
Perhaps something like group play. Divide all the teams into groups. Each team plays every other team in the group. Some number of teams advance to the next round, where the process repeats.
For example, 16 teams are divided into 4 groups of 4 teams. Each team plays 3 matches. The top team of each group advances. Those teams play each other. The top team wins the tournament. This takes 6 rounds (3 in the first stage; 3 in the second) with a total of 30 matches (24 in the first stage; 6 in the second). The champion will have played 6 matches. (In comparison, a traditional 16-team single-elimination tournament would have 4 rounds with 15 matches and champion playing 4 matches.)
Lots of variants by changing the number of teams per group in each stage, number of groups in each stage, the number of teams that advance from each group, the number of stages, etc.
I lol’d.
World Cups used to be done that way, and that’s a good solution to the Penalties Problem, but I can’t avoid feeling that something would be lost if we know who’s going to win the cup before the final match(which would happen sometimes when the lead team get’s an unscalable difference) or if the champion is defined in a match where the champion is not even playing (for example if the runner up loses against someone already out of the race)
Yeah, this sounds awful. Doesn’t something like that happen sometimes in the Tour De France, where the ultimate winner can be determined a few days in advance?
May be an hybrid version could exist, where there are eliminatory matches just as usual but in case of a tie you compare the whole tournament stats of both teams and , for example, the one who scored more goals or has a better goal difference wins.
A bit unfair to teams who played against harder opponents in previous installments though…
I agree. I’m not necessarily advocating only group stages (see my earlier post for a tiebreaker system), but soccer naturally has ties and any tournament that forces tiebreakers is changing the game. It’s reflected in the strategies of the teams.
I think have group-only stages and no single-elimination matches will improve the gameplay, at the cost of sometimes reducing the importance of some matches. Whether that’s a worthy trade-off is very subjective.
Given all the different variations on in-match tiebreakers that have been tried with poor success, it might be time to design tournaments without single elimination and no in-match tiebreakers, and see how they feel.
Anti-climactic, is my guess.
World Cups are still done this way in the initial round. In 2018, there were 8 groups of 4 teams each, with each team playing the other 3 in the group. 3 points for a win, 1 point for a draw, top 2 teams advanced to the knockout stage. Goal differential was the tiebreaker if needed.
Once the top 2 teams advanced to the round of 16, the rules were the same as what we’re seeing in the Euro tournament. If the match was tied, 30 minutes of extra time; if still tied, then penalties.
I believe the format is the same for 2022, but in 2026 there will be 48 qualifying teams. I’m not sure how that will work.