I generally don’t pay much attention to soccer until it’s World Cup time, but now that things are gearing up, I’ve got a question about the history of the rules.
In the past, were different procedure used for resolving ties in the later rounds of World Cup competition? This page http://www.fifa.com/refs/laws_E.html gives the current setup: Extra time with the “Golden Goal” and then a penalty kick shootout.
I dislike the penalty kick shootouts (it just seems too random) and I wondered if other methods of resolving ties had been tried in the past.
I think that the Golden Goal concept is fairly recent, although in American football “sudden death” has been used for quite some time in the playoffs and more recently in regular season when ties were abandoned (mostly). Before then they played a set amount of time in extra periods, then eventually went to penalty kicks. A classic was the France - Germany semifinal match in 1982, IIRC.
If you’re interested in seeing some traditional football type games you might want to visit various places in Tuscany Italy were the no-rules or few hardcore renaissance and medieval type games are still played regularly.
In the old days (and still in use in the FA Cup) is that if a game is tied after extra time (it’s not overtime), they would just play the whole game over from scratch.
They haven’t used replays to settle ties in the World Cup since 1958. Since then the organisers realised that they couldn’t afford to hold up the competition and there isn’t enough time between regular games to allow for replays too. There’s pressure against using replays in the FA Cup too because the police want too much notice to provide the security for each game and the time schedule is very tight.
If you think that the penalty shootout is a bad idea, then you should realise that between '58 and '70 the tie-breaker would have been a coin toss if they couldn’t find a winner after half an hour’s extra time! Fortunately they never had to use that in practice (the closest they came to it was a Uruguay v Russia game in 1970 IIRC that was still level after 118 minutes).
The Golden Goal was introduced last time at the France '98 tournament. There’s been some talk of dropping it.
Penalty shootouts have their own drama, although it’s tough to be on the losing end of one. Can you suggest a better alternative?
The trend in Europe at leats is for teams to be less cautious and more attack minded, so that’s led to gradually fewer shootouts being needed in big games.
This site gives a good brief history of the World Cup.
I paid $150 to see the 1998 Cup Final at the Rose Bowl between Italy and Brazil.
It was hot. It was uncomfortable. And it was decided on a shanked penalty by Baggio.
I really sympathise with you there BobT (1998 must’ve been a typo btw). I think you all got a pretty raw deal out of the '94 World Cup in the USA. I was embarassed to see that because I felt it was not the best introduction to my favourite sport for a largely new audience. But maybe we should compare that let-down with other recent international competitions?
In the knock-out stages of the 1998 France World Cup, only 3 of the 16 games were settled by spot kicks, the same as in the USA. I think the fact that the '94 Final was decided that way sticks badly in the memory.
Also, if we look at recent results in European knock-out competitions since 1994, we can see plenty of goals and few matches decided by penalties:
European Cup (= Champions League)
2001/02 Real Madrid 2-1 Bayer Leverkusen
2000/01 Bayern München 1-1 Valencia (5-4 pens)
1999/00 Real Madrid 3-0 Valencia
1998/99 Manchester United 2-1 Bayern München
1997/98 Juventus 0-1 Real Madrid
1996/97 Borussia Dortmund 3-1 Juventus
1995/96 Juventus 1-1 Ajax (4-2 pens)
1994/95 Ajax 1-0 Milan
1993/94 Milan 4-0 Barcelona
UEFA Cup
2001/02 Feyenoord 3-2 Borussia Dortmund
2000/01 Liverpool 5-4 Alaves (aet)
1999/00 Galatasaray 0-0 Arsenal (4-1 pens)
1998/99 Parma 3-0 Marseille
1997/98 Internazionale 3-0 Lazio
1996/97 Schalke '04 4-2 Internazionale
1995/96 Bayern München 3-1 Bordeaux
1994/95 Parma 2-1 Juventus (aggregate of 2 games)
1993/94 Internazionale 6-2 Cagliari (agg of 2 games)
Although these are matches between clubs, not countries, my belief is that they suggest a trend away from penalties. In the previous 16 European Cup finals, 4 needed penalties to decide them, three finished 0-0 after extra time, and 10 finished 1-0. The worst was the 1986 final in which Steaua Bucharest beat Barcelona 2-0 on pens after a 0-0 draw - that’s right, Barça not only failed to score in the match but missed all their pens as well. How’d you like to spend $150 + on that evening’s entertainment?
I hope this year’s World Cup is entertaining, not least because it’s also being played outside of the traditional European/S American homes of football. You may be interested to hear that I have a friend who’s spent his airmiles and thousands of dollars to get to Japan, and even though he’s English he’s following the USA.
Oops, it was 1994. The heat that day fried my brain.
I was able to withstand the heat for all the other matches at the Rose Bowl, but for the final you had to get into the stadium much earlier and since it went into extra time, it took longer. And then there was the presentation of the trophy. (Can’t miss the opportunity to see Dunga shake Al Gore’s hand.)