In a recent thread, this 1994 Caribbean soccer tournament game was mentioned. Summary: If Team A beats Team B by two or more points, Team A moves on and Team B is out; if not, Team B moves on and Team A is out.
The rules were that overtime would end in sudden death (“golden goal”) – which is pretty common, I think, no? (Or was it more common then than now?). BUT, this tournament included a weird rule: that golden goal would count for 2 points!
So, if the game is tied close to the end of regulation, Team A would everything it could to keep the game tied (since they’re more likely to get one two-point goal during overtime, than to get two one-point goals in the time remaining in regulation), while Team B would do everything it could to PREVENT a tie – including, getting an own goal! (Losing by one is just as good as winning by one). Hilarity ensued.
My question is this: Yes, that bizarre two-point-golden-goal rule gave extra incentive for this to occur. BUT, wouldn’t the same basic thing happen even WITHOUT that strange rule?
That is, ANY time you have: 1. One team that must win by two or more points to qualify, and the other team must prevent this to qualify; and 2. A tie is followed by sudden-death overtime;
wouldn’t the second team try to score an own goal if there’s a tie close to the end of regulation?
If this is the case, maybe this is one reason tournaments with “golden goals” to decide games are no longer as common as they once were?
I should add – IF my analysis is correct, have there been more own-goal incidents like this in major tournaments like this in recent decades – that is, even without that silly two-point golden goal rule?
It’s possible I’m not reading your scenario right, but in my reading of it there’s no incentive to score the own goal.
Here’s my reasoning; let me know if I’m not understanding you correctly.
Team A and Team B are playing a game that will determine which of the two moves on. Team A must not only win, but win by two goals, in order to advance. A win by one goal or a loss will send them home. Team B advances if Team A doesn’t. So Team A MUST win by 2, and Team B “wins” as long as they don’t lose by two or more.
The teams are tied close to the end of regulation. No ties are allowed in this tournament, and sudden death WILL happen if the game remains tied after the formal end of the second half. In sudden death the game is over as soon as one team scores, so if there’s a tie after regulation play, SOMEone will win by one. Eventually!
In your scenario, Team A is essentially out of the tournament as soon as regulation ends with the score tied. At best they will win this game by one goal. Not enough! So it is in team B’s interest to have the game end in a tie.
Yes, Team B could score an own goal very late, but why would they? There’d be the possibility (slim but not nonexistent) that Team A would have just enough time to score again, giving them the two-goal win they need. Better to play for the tie, which is a guaranteed advancement for them.
As I say, maybe this isn’t your scenario, and if that’s the case I apologize. But I think you have to have that two-goal-for-a-sudden-death-goal rule to make an own goal a reasonable option.
Now, off the top of my head the scenario might be different if we weren’t dealing with sudden-death overtime. In the World Cup today there are overtime periods of a set duration. Teams can–and do–score more than once in these periods. Belgium scored twice in extra time against the US in 2014, if memory serves, and I think the US got a goal too.
So, in the above scenario with “regular” OT, Team A could still win by two even after regulation ends with the score tied. Heck, they COULD win by three, or even four. Whereas in the sudden death scenario they can ONLY win by one. In the score-as-many-as-you-can-in-the-time-allowed format, then, it might make sense for Team B to try for the own goal and lose by one rather than risk potentially being outscored by two in overtime.
I still don’t think I’d go that route. But in this case it does seem doable, and like you I wonder if anyone has tried it.
Ulf, you are absolutely right! Thanks for taking the time to explain it so clearly.
The unlikely (but possible) scenario you mention at the end of your post is the one I was originally thinking of – when it’s NOT sudden death, but rather avoiding a tie near the end of regulation (even via an own-goal) at least avoids giving the other team lots of extra time to go ahead by two.
We both await an answer as to whether this has happened in a major tournament.
The problem with the extra time scenario is that extra time is usually only played in knockout situations, and so no tiebreakers are involved. In the World Cup the goal tiebreakers are only applicable in the group stage, where games are allowed to end as draws.
One situation just happened today where a team might have considered purposely scoring own goals. If Iceland had beaten Croatia, they would have advanced, while Croatia would win the group regardless of the results today. So if Croatia think that Argentina is a stronger team than Iceland, Croatia could lose on purpose to knock Argentina out.
The problem with that scenario is that the two teams from each Group that advance to the knockout stage go into different halves of the knockout ladder. There isn’t much incentive for Croatia to knck Argentina out of the tournament because the only way it makes any difference to them is if they make the final, and if Argentina isn’t the other finalist it’ll be another team at least as good.
I could see a case where a team might want to deliberately finish second in their Group (and might prefer not to win their final Group game) if they thought that would give them an easier path in the knockout stage. That shouldn’t happen; Group winners play Group runners-up in the first knockout game (and vice versa).
Yeah, the Argentina thing is a minor consideration at best. In fact, you could make an argument that you want lots of good-but-not-great teams on the other side of the bracket, since they have a better chance of knocking out a great team they might meet.
We were talking about the first/second thing in the World Cup thread earlier with regard to England vs Belgium. It looks like the loser of their game will probably go into an easier section of the bracket.
How much of that if based on reputation, and how much on their performance so far in this tournament? On reputation, you don’t want to face Argentina or Germany. Based on the past two weeks you don’t want to play Croatia or Mexico.
Every team in the tournament would prefer to play Mexico over Germany even accounting for the fact that Mexico beat Germany. Regression to the mean. Germany has a significantly better roster than Mexico. It’s more likely they are harder to beat going forward than Mexico.
Argentina vs Croatia? I think most teams would prefer Argentina.
The England vs. Belgium game is one that is going to reward the losing team with an easier schedule going forward tomorrow. The winning side will likely have to play Brazil in the round of 8, and then another tough team in the round of 4. The side that loses will get either Switzerland or Sweden in the round of 8, and could possibly get another weak team in the round of 4 if Spain slips up. Spain is the only big name team on that side of the bracket. The winning team from group G gets the side with France, Brazil, Portugal and Uruguay. I know I would rather be on the side of the bracket that the 2nd place group G team will be in, since that’s an easier path to the final game.
As Mr. Blue said, both England and Belgium would probably like to lose today, since they’d face a much easier set of opponents moving forward if they lose. I doubt they’re going to be too obvious about it, since FIFA would suspend the coach and maybe others for too blatantly trying to lose. If a player obviously deliberately scored an own goal, they’d almost certainly be suspended or otherwise disciplined, too. So, sadly, we probably won’t see a complete reversal with teams attacking their own goal and defending the other one.
But I assume any regular starting player with the slightest twinge will be too ‘injured’ to play today, and we’ll see few of the ones playing making potentially dangerous (to themselves) plays.
The interesting twist here is that there’s an incentive to not only be scored upon, but also to get yellow cards: the tie-breaker, if the game ends up tied, is that the group winner is whichever team has gotten the least yellow/red cards over the group stage. So if the game looks headed to a tie, both teams might be wanting to get yellow cards.
Doubtful, as in rounds that use goal difference, they almost never have any sort of overtime; a tie after 90 minutes is a draw. Otherwise, it leads to the Caribbean Cup situation.
There is overtime in the World Cup, but only in the knockout (elimination) stage when every match needs to have a winner.
The closest I can see to intentionally scoring an own goal in modern tournaments is if a team knows that it is advancing to the next round and wants some control over who else advances. This is harder to do than it used to be with the requirement (at least in the World Cup) that all of the teams in a group must have their last group matches start simultaneously, but if one match has more injury time than another, it is still possible.