The specific matchup I am referring to is the recent home-and-away UEFA Champions League where the total score between both teams determines the winner . . .well maybe not. Juventus scored 3 goals, Porto 2 but Juventus got eliminated because of this “aggregate” system where the final score was 4-4.
My understanding is that under the UEFA system, a goal scored at home is 1 goal; but a score on the road is 2 “goals” or “points” if you will.
Game One, Porto visited Juventus and scored one goal, so that’s 2 “points” for them; Juventus scored 1 goal so after leg one its 2-1, Porto on “aggregate”
Back in Porto they score 0 home goals, and Juventus score 2 home goals, for 2 points.
So the aggregate is 4-4 but because Porto scored 2 goals away, THAT is the tiebreaker? How fair is THAT?
Perhaps most away goals scored can be the tiebreaker if the actual score is tied, or a shootout.
How long has this been in place? Is this just a temporary rule because of COVID?
Based on the announcer reactions, Juventus appears to be a heavy favorite so some are going to say “they knew the rules” but I’m sorry in my world when you score more points than the other team, you are the winner. This might be the ridiculous thing I have ever seen in sports.
Isn’t that true of any sport? It’s been acknowledged in baseball forever that the “homefield” team has an advantage.
The solution in baseball has always been simply to make sure that game are scheduled to be evenly divided so every teams gets the same number of home games.
Porto scored two goals in the first leg, not one. The two scorers were Termi and Marega.
So, over the two legs, each team scored an aggregate of 4 goals. The tie is awarded to Juventus because 3 of their 4 goals were away goals, as compared to only 2 of Porto’s 4 goals.
So many wrong facts in this thread. Porto won at home 2-1. They then lost 2-3 at Juventus. Both teams scored 4 goals - Juventus one away goal, Porto 2 away goals. As has been customary for as long as I can recall, if the two teams score the same number of goals home and away, the team with more away goals wins. And that was Porto.
Because it is a home and away fixture played over two legs. After the first leg in February one paper said, “Federico Chiesa scored what could prove to be a vital away goal for Juventus in the 82nd minute,” underlining the importance of away goals. But they aren’t any use if you then concede two at home.
The away goals rule has led to some incredible matches - it is not a bad rule as has been suggested. The two-legged system is of course a way to create more games and garner more money but it can really produce some epic clashes and it can mean a late goal in the second leg can swing a result around entirely, even after 180 minutes of football.
Both teams know the rules at the start of the first leg. Juventus (and everyone else except the OP seemingly) always knew at the start of the second leg that 3-2 would put them out.
This rule also strongly discourages the away team in the first leg from putting ten men behind the ball and defending for a 0-0. Playing attacking football in the away leg pays dividends. The home team has home-field advantage and needs to capitalise on it and win the game but it’s horrendous to concede so they are playing on a knife edge. Brilliant rule.
You clearly didn’t understand what you were watching.
Because that was the match score. Juventus won that match 3:2 over Porto so that’s what was on the scoreboard at the end.
But the contest (Champions League) is a two-leg home-and-home with the aggregate score determining who advances to the next round. If the aggregate score is tied after both legs then the team with more away goals advances (but doesn’t necessarily “win” that particular match as in this case where Juve won the match but Porto won the prize (advancing in the CL).
Juventus won the game last night 3-2. But they lost the tie across two games on away goals with Porto winning the first game 2-1.
Both teams scored 4 goals after two games of football. Porto scored 2/4 goals away from home. Juventus scored 1/4 goals away from home.
Porto by virtue of having more away goals goes through because the idea is it is harder to score away than at home but more rewarding and therefore negative defensive play is discouraged.
Here’s an example of what I mean:
Game 1:
Team Green beats Team Yellow 1-0 at home. Team Green will travel to Team Yellow with a 1-0 lead in the tie.
Game 2:
It’s half time and Team Yellow lead 1-0 up at home. The aggregate of the tie is 1-1. Only if this scoreline stays at the end of the second half can the game go to extra time. You only get an additional 30 minutes of play if both results match at the end of the regulation 90 minutes.
Team Green scores to level the game at 1-1. They also take the lead again on aggregate 1-2 and have an away goal. This game now cannot go to extra time. Team Yellow has to score two further goals without conceding to go through. Every additional away goal Team Green scores means Team Yellow has to score one more. Team Yellow have to win on aggregate. Team Green only have to tie on aggregate because they have the value of an away goal.
Whilst the away goal rule is a good enough tiebreaker, I think it should be suspended if the second leg goes into extra time. Juve and Porto both beat their opponent 2-1 at home. As it was an identical score Porto get an extra 30 minutes with the away goal advantage. Extra time was a 1-1 draw, I think the rule should be a penalty shootout in this situation.
+1
And for something so simple it has a brilliant effect on the overall tie.
Elsewise each away team would park the bus, you’d get two boring as batshit 0-0 draws and then the winner is determined by a penalty kick raffle.
These are the absolute cream teams of world football and the structure of the tie with the away goals rule allows both teams an incentive to play their best.
Apparently, this happened, sort of; in the second round of the 1971 European Cup-Winners Cup, Glasgow Rangers beat Sporting Lisbon at home 3-2 in the first leg, and Sporting won 3-2 at home in the second. Both teams scored in the extra time, which should have meant Rangers won the tie on total away goals, but somebody forgot to tell the referee, who ordered a penalty shootout, which Sporting won. UEFA reversed the ruling, and I think Rangers ended up winning that cup.
To me, that sounds like it could be an issue in how the winners are communicated. The way I would relate that is that the game score was Juventus 3-2, but that the total score was Porvo 4-4. Just marking who won the cumulative contest while only listing the current game total would be confusing to those not used to the convention. It would look like Porvo somehow won with a score of 2-3, when they actually won with a cumulative score of 4-4.
I agree the convention makes sense. It’s is essentially the same as giving a very small amount (say 0.00001) extra credit for an away goal. It would not normally matter, except in the case of a tie in raw goal numbers. And it makes sense that an away goal is ever so slightly harder to score.
It makes more sense than having a game’s winner decided by what is essentially a completely different game, which is what happens when you have a penalty kick shootout at the end. And having games both home and away for both teams is a neat way to both reduce the luck factor and factor in any “home field advantage.”
I may not be a sports aficionado, but I do enjoy the underlying structure of balancing games.
Why don’t they just do a best 2-out-of-3 contest to determine who wins? It seems silly to have a tournament with an even number of matches to force a tiebreaker.
The point is to avoid one side having home advantage. Each tie has two legs, and each team has one leg at home and one away. You couldn’t have that balance in a three-leg tie.