Go back to Sheffield Rules and reintroduce the rouge, but without the flags. Wikipedia: Historically, one of the first tie-breaking procedures was contained in the Sheffield Rules between 1862 and 1871, with the concept of the rouge, scorable when the ball went narrowly wide of the goal. Rule 14 stated “A goal outweighs any number of rouges. Should no goals or an equal number be obtained, the match is decided by rouges”.
Or…
If the ball hits the post but doesn’t go in, or if the ball misses the side post by less than the width of the soccer ball, then it’s a rouge. Have 1 ref on each side call it. Permit review of such high tech devices as a video camera on each side.
Rouges only count during overtime: rouges during the actual game would be ignored. Tradition! But at the end of 2 rounds of overtime if the score is tied, the rouges during overtime would be counted.
A variant of that was used in five-a-side when I was a kid. They counted the amount of corners and in the event of a draw they went one who had one the most corners. I can’t quite remember what happened if that number was the same.
That isn’t true. Very few NFL games run close to four hours. They run an average of about three hours and five minutes, and are very, very consistent in hitting that within ten m inutes or so. It is unusual for a game to go beyond three and a half hours.
That is longer than the other major North American pro sports, but not by a lot. Major League Baseball games run about 2 hours 45 minutes to 2 hours 55, depending on how much offense there is in a given year, but are extremely variable, with games sometimes running just a shade over two hours and sometimes running past four.
NHL typically last about two and a half hours, NBA games about 2:20. NBA games can theoretically go on forever, since the NBA plays overtimes until a winner is decided, but they rarely go long.
Not sure you want to encourage players to manufacture corners though. More shots on goal OTOH, might be a good thing, at least in overtime.
You could have a goal beat any number of overtime rouges, an overtime rouge beat any number of overtime corners, and an overtime corner beating any number of overtime fouls. After that it’s overtime time in possession. Or you could just say an equal number of rouges constitutes a tie.
Attacker Defender Goalkeeper website: http://www.theadgalternative.com/index.html# :
The 5th August 2010 marked the fortieth anniversary of the penalty kick shootout and if indeed it ever had a place in the game, then that time has indisputably come to an end. No other aspect of football is as universally unpopular with players, managers and supporters.
…In a survey involving close to four hundred people, 51% said that they thought shootouts were a lottery. In the same study, half of those surveyed believed there was a better way than shootouts to determine the result of drawn games.1
The NFL announced its average game time this past season was 3:11:56. There were an average of 11 minutes of actual play and 17 minutes of replays shown.
They continue to have the American sports consumer by the throat, as evidenced by their ability to get away with that kind of nonsense, but length of game and the number of stoppages has been cited as reasons for game attendances to continue declining slightly. SEC schools – including Alabama and Georgia --are seeing their student sections go unfilled at many games. And that’s the next generation of fans.
There’s a long way to go but nothing lasts forever. If a new generation’s attention span isn’t up to the length of time needed to watch a football game from beginning to end, it will look for something else to do.
That tells me 51% dont know feck all aboot soccer. There’s actually quite a bit of skill involved with penalty kicks. Some countries are really good at them (Germany, Brazil) while other countries are not so good at them (England, Holland :().
If you think PK’s are easy go to your nearest field, try 20 to 30 out against an amateur keeper, and see how many you can convert.
My guess is you’ll miss at least 50%
And at some point it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy; if you are used to going out on penalties, you will start to dread them… although the Dutch won their last shoot out (2004 against Sweden).
The number of penalty shootouts taken in major international play is simply not enough to conclusively demonstrate that different nations are really all that much better at them. England has a terrible winning percentage in penalty shootouts - but since they started having them they’ve only HAD six shootouts, which is a miniscule sample. It’s also worth noting English players have converted 68% of shootout attempts, which actually is not that bad; South Korea is at 69% but has won 6 of 8 shootouts. You can shoot okay but lose if the other team has a really good day.
As a transplanted ‘Merican in Ol’ Blighty (go Spurs!) I do wish sometimes the EPL would adopt some practices from US sports, such as drafts (teams that finished at the bottom of the standings get to draft incoming players first).
But we’re totally missing the point - the proper conversation to have is, why aren’t US sports adopting the greatest point about European football in general - relegation!
What a fantastic idea! Lose 14 of 16 games? You’ll play in the SEC next year, Houston Texans! You’ll have in-state company - lose 111 games, and over 100 games for three straight years? Welcome to Triple A, Houston Astros! I think all US sports should implement this immediately.
The reason this isn’t going to happen is that the individual club owners are themselves owners of the league and they’re not going to vote to institute a system that would create the risk of being relegated, which would spell financial disaster.
I don’t buy that there are significant nationality-based differences between elite athletes from European countries that are quite close to each other.
