# Ways to get rid of penalty kicks to decide a game **URL:** \ **Category:** The Game Room\ **Created:** [June 27, 2016, 11:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ways-to-get-rid-of-penalty-kicks-to-decide-a-game/758568 "2016-06-27T23:24:02Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Robot\_Arm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robot_arm/32/18280_2.png) [@Robot\_Arm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robot_Arm)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2016, 1:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ways-to-get-rid-of-penalty-kicks-to-decide-a-game/758568/81 "2016-06-30T01:31:39Z")
> [@filmore](#): > > Maybe corner kicks would be a better thing to use. They’re an integral part of the game already and should better represent a team’s ability. A team takes a corner kick and the ball stays in play until the team scores, the goalie grabs it, it goes out of bounds, or crosses midfield. > [@ISiddiqui](#): > > Now THAT is a great idea. Though, rather than crosses midfield (which could get ridiculous ) I’d say goes past 30 yards from goal (have a sideline official stand on that yard line to determine). Or 30 seconds. > > Though I see the concern for injury as well… and that is something to take into account. The strategy during that sort of corner kick would be quite different from corner kicks during the run of play. During a game, a team has to give some effort to defense; don’t want to give up a long pass and a breakaway to the other team. If they had alternating corner kicks to decide a tie game, as filmore suggests, teams would bring everyone forward, even the goalie. It would be a true 11-on-11 and the box would be even more crowded than it is now. It might be interesting to see how it played out if teams could completely forget about playing defense, but you’d still be deciding the game by something that isn’t the same as real soccer. ---
**Author:** ![Dag\_Otto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/439d5e/32.png) [@Dag\_Otto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dag_Otto)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2016, 1:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ways-to-get-rid-of-penalty-kicks-to-decide-a-game/758568/82 "2016-06-30T01:48:23Z")
> [@chizzuk](#): > > This is total apples to oranges. A regulation hockey game is only two-thirds as long as a regulation soccer match. And then they also have TWO intermissions of 18 minutes EACH, while soccer has one 15-minute break. To say nothing of the biggest difference, unlimited substitutions and line changes. So yeah, I’m sure if soccer cut out 30 minutes of playing time from the get-go, added 21 minutes of break, and allowed substituting willy-nilly, they could go a lot longer, but that’s not the game, so what the NHL manages is irrelevant. > > And soccer matches are often every 3 days, not a week, but whatever. Professional cyclists that ride the grand tours are laughing at this. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2016, 2:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ways-to-get-rid-of-penalty-kicks-to-decide-a-game/758568/83 "2016-06-30T02:21:11Z")
The problem with the tongue-in-cheek suggestions about expanding goalposts is that all of those require new and modified equipment, whereas PKs can be done without modifying existing equipment one bit. I rather like the idea of sudden-death overtime, no goalkeepers, first team to score wins. Should make for frenzied, panicked, enjoyable football. ---
**Author:** ![NAF1138](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/naf1138/32/3245_2.png) [@NAF1138](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NAF1138)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2016, 2:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ways-to-get-rid-of-penalty-kicks-to-decide-a-game/758568/84 "2016-06-30T02:23:59Z")
> [@Peremensoe](#): > > Read better. Seriously? Is the discussion so serious that I can’t find something amusing even if it was unintentional and comment on it? Even if I was the only one? It wasn’t even amusing at your expense. How is this any different that the thousands of “I read that as” posts on the board? This is a pretty disappointing response to a silly comment. ---
**Author:** ![Peremensoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ce7236/32.png) [@Peremensoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peremensoe)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2016, 3:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ways-to-get-rid-of-penalty-kicks-to-decide-a-game/758568/85 "2016-06-30T03:18:54Z")
> [@NAF1138](#): > > Seriously? Is the discussion so serious that I can’t find something amusing even if it was unintentional and comment on it? No, not seriously. > [@NAF1138](#): > > This is a pretty disappointing response to a silly comment. Ayup. :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![NAF1138](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/naf1138/32/3245_2.png) [@NAF1138](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NAF1138)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2016, 3:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ways-to-get-rid-of-penalty-kicks-to-decide-a-game/758568/86 "2016-06-30T03:21:11Z")
> [@Peremensoe](#): > > No, not seriously. > > Ayup. :rolleyes: Fair enough. 🆒 ---
**Author:** ![Wallaby](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/dc4da7/32.png) [@Wallaby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wallaby)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2016, 5:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ways-to-get-rid-of-penalty-kicks-to-decide-a-game/758568/87 "2016-06-30T05:42:09Z")
It’s simple. Retain the integrity of the game, but introduce an element that creates extra tactics. And the solution comes from the world of … pinball machines. Yep. MULTIBALL! ---
**Author:** ![I\_Love\_Me\_Vol.I](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/i_love_me_vol.i/32/521_2.png) [@I\_Love\_Me\_Vol.I](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/I_Love_Me_Vol.I)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2016, 9:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ways-to-get-rid-of-penalty-kicks-to-decide-a-game/758568/88 "2016-06-30T09:21:40Z")
> [@iamthewalrus\_3](#): > > your response misses the mark entirely. I’m not arguing that football is boring because it’s low scoring. I’m not trying to jazz it up or cheapen it. > > But it is a hard mathematical fact that the harder it is to score a goal, the more likely you are to end up with a tie game. And if the resolution of those ties is unsatisfying, then it’s reasonable to consider whether it’s worth the tradeoff. OK. Fair enough. It’s just that I hear the tired old “Soccer is boring because there’s not enough scoring!!” so often that I thought you were supporting that crowd. Yes, the lower the scoring of a given sport, the more likely it is to result in a tie. But games ending in a draw are an accepted part of soccer. That’s just the way the game is… if anyone doesn’t like that then they don’t have to watch it. Nothing needs to be changed to try to eliminate draws. Draws are fine. Remember, the only time penalty shootouts are needed is in the elimination rounds of a tournament. They are never used in friendlies, or in league play, or in tournament qualification matches (with rare exceptions), or in group stages of tournaments. Thus, it is a very, very small percentage of games that go to penalties. The low scoring in soccer that makes it more likely to end in a draw is not a problem. As others have said here" it is a feature, not a bug. ---
**Author:** ![I\_Love\_Me\_Vol.I](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/i_love_me_vol.i/32/521_2.png) [@I\_Love\_Me\_Vol.I](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/I_Love_Me_Vol.I)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2016, 9:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ways-to-get-rid-of-penalty-kicks-to-decide-a-game/758568/89 "2016-06-30T09:29:36Z")
> [@eschereal](#): > > At the end of the 90+, You switch to a simple sudden-death decider: play until one player gets a foot on the ball inside the other team’s 18 yard box. Holy shit!!! Are you serious?? Can you imagine the number of hard fouls that would occur as a player got anywhere close to the penalty area? And how many cards would result from that? After about 5 minutes you wouldn’t have enough players to finish the match. In a thread with many silly ideas for replacing “kicks from the penalty mark”, yours takes the cake (although I haven’t finished reading the thread yet ;)). ---
**Author:** ![Quercus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/7ab992/32.png) [@Quercus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quercus)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2016, 2:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ways-to-get-rid-of-penalty-kicks-to-decide-a-game/758568/90 "2016-06-30T14:00:56Z")
> [@Bijou\_Drains](#): > > Also hockey can play up to 3 games a week and sometimes they play 2 games in 2 nights , even in the playoffs. No one is saying that hockey players are out of shape; but the fact that they can play two games in two nights kind of demonstrates that a (top-level) hockey game is easier to recover from than a (top-level) soccer game. > [@Velocity](#): > > I rather like the idea of sudden-death overtime, no goalkeepers, first team to score wins. Should make for frenzied, panicked, enjoyable football. Thing is, even if there were no legal goalkeepers, you’d still have them. As Uruguay (and Ghana) could tell you, better commit an illegal handball (and take the red card and PK) than let the game-winning goal in. ---
**Author:** ![ISiddiqui](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/97f17d/32.png) [@ISiddiqui](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ISiddiqui)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2016, 2:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ways-to-get-rid-of-penalty-kicks-to-decide-a-game/758568/91 "2016-06-30T14:04:14Z")
> [@iamthewalrus\_3](#): > > I’m not sure total number of games decided by PKs is the right metric, since apparently the most important games are the ones most at risk of being decided not by playing the game. But your ‘solution’ was to increase scoring to prevent ties. Which… fucks up every other game just for the sake of avoiding ties in elimination tournaments. ---
**Author:** ![iamthewalrus\_3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/258eb7/32.png) [@iamthewalrus\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamthewalrus_3)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2016, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ways-to-get-rid-of-penalty-kicks-to-decide-a-game/758568/92 "2016-06-30T16:42:38Z")
> [@ISiddiqui](#): > > But your ‘solution’ was to increase scoring to prevent ties. Which… fucks up every other game just for the sake of avoiding ties in elimination tournaments. Well, I don’t think increasing scoring _fucks up_ the game, but ok. If draws are just a part of the game, and the low scoring nature of the game is a feature (one argument I’ve heard is that it makes the game more strategic, and makes the value of a goal so much higher), then why doesn’t that argument extend to a tournament? Draws will just be a part of the tournament structure. And tournament winners will be rare, but that just makes them that much more valuable. ---
**Author:** ![ISiddiqui](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/97f17d/32.png) [@ISiddiqui](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ISiddiqui)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2016, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ways-to-get-rid-of-penalty-kicks-to-decide-a-game/758568/93 "2016-06-30T17:21:06Z")
Because fans like to see winners in their tournaments. And in reading this thread and others like it, I’m getting more and more convinced that PK’s are the worst way to select a winner of a draw after extra time… aside from all the other ideas. ---
**Author:** ![Kyrie\_Eleison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kyrie_eleison/32/7682_2.png) [@Kyrie\_Eleison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kyrie_Eleison)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2016, 5:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ways-to-get-rid-of-penalty-kicks-to-decide-a-game/758568/94 "2016-06-30T17:40:40Z")
How about in the event of a tie, the first to have scored is the winner? Settles most ties and encourages aggressive play at the beginning of the match. Retain the penalty kick system for 0-0 matches, because, really, who can bitch about the outcome being settled that way for a couple of teams that couldn’t manage to score even once? ---
**Author:** ![iamthewalrus\_3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/258eb7/32.png) [@iamthewalrus\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamthewalrus_3)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2016, 6:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ways-to-get-rid-of-penalty-kicks-to-decide-a-game/758568/95 "2016-06-30T18:01:41Z")
> [@ISiddiqui](#): > > Because fans like to see winners in their tournaments. But, don’t they also like to see winners in their games? Here’s another way of thinking about this: You can have a game where draws are relatively common, and where events that require a winner are decided by some other mechanism than playing the game normally. You can have a game where draws are relatively rare, and where events that require a winner are decided by playing the game normally. You can have a game where draws are relatively common, and where events that require a winner sometimes don’t get one. You _can’t_ have a game where draws are relatively common and where events that require a winner are decided by playing the game normally. So, yeah, it would be lovely if football could be low-scoring and tournaments could complete without some artificial tiebreaker. But the universe doesn’t work that way. So, which is more important? Personally, I think that having tournaments have a winner determined by playing the actual game is pretty important, and the other considerations should give way. ---
**Author:** ![iamthewalrus\_3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/258eb7/32.png) [@iamthewalrus\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamthewalrus_3)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2016, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ways-to-get-rid-of-penalty-kicks-to-decide-a-game/758568/96 "2016-06-30T18:03:35Z")
> [@Kyrie\_Eleison](#): > > How about in the event of a tie, the first to have scored is the winner? Settles most ties and encourages aggressive play at the beginning of the match. Retain the penalty kick system for 0-0 matches, because, really, who can bitch about the outcome being settled that way for a couple of teams that couldn’t manage to score even once? Seems reasonable. You could also have the last to have scored be the winner. It settles the same number of ties and makes for more exciting games all the way through. ---
**Author:** ![ISiddiqui](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/97f17d/32.png) [@ISiddiqui](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ISiddiqui)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2016, 6:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ways-to-get-rid-of-penalty-kicks-to-decide-a-game/758568/97 "2016-06-30T18:22:26Z")
> [@iamthewalrus\_3](#): > > But, don’t they also like to see winners in their games? In a league game, or a round robin, they are perfectly fine with a draw, leading to the participants getting one point each. In elimination tournaments they want to see a winner of the match and are generally fine with PKs deciding it. > [@](#): > > Here’s another way of thinking about this: > > You can have a game where draws are relatively common, and where events that require a winner are decided by some other mechanism than playing the game normally. > > You can have a game where draws are relatively rare, and where events that require a winner are decided by playing the game normally. > > You can have a game where draws are relatively common, and where events that require a winner sometimes don’t get one. > > You _can’t_ have a game where draws are relatively common and where events that require a winner are decided by playing the game normally. > > So, yeah, it would be lovely if football could be low-scoring and tournaments could complete without some artificial tiebreaker. But the universe doesn’t work that way. So, which is more important? Personally, I think that having tournaments have a winner determined by playing the actual game is pretty important, and the other considerations should give way. Which is why I said PKs are the worst system, aside from the rest. I’m perfectly fine with draws being common and in tournament play, where fans want a winner to decide a draw with PKs. And it would appear that most soccer fans tend to agree with this, because even though there may be some complaining about PKs, people generally come to the realization that other options are worse and keep the PK option. ---
**Author:** ![Laggard](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/9de053/32.png) [@Laggard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Laggard)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2016, 7:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ways-to-get-rid-of-penalty-kicks-to-decide-a-game/758568/98 "2016-06-30T19:57:06Z")
Wait, is anyone arguing that ties need to be eliminated outside of knockout play? The phobia of ties seems almost to be uniquely American. ---
**Author:** ![OldGuy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/3bc359/32.png) [@OldGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OldGuy)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2016, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ways-to-get-rid-of-penalty-kicks-to-decide-a-game/758568/99 "2016-06-30T20:35:38Z")
> [@Sampsiceramos](#): > > It should also be added that PK competitions are in fact not even remotely resemblant of a coin toss in terms of probabilities - the team which scores first in a PK competition wins roughly 70% of the time (if memory serves), as opposed to the 50/50 of a perfectly random coin. This isn’t a valid argument for two reasons. First the team that scores first is pretty close to a coin flip as the order is determined by a coin flip and the team that scores shoots first has a high probability of scroing first. Second once you condition on a team scoring first, the odds are 50-50 for a win even if they were ex ante. About 75% of PKs are scored. So if my team shoots first and we score first I’ve eliminated one 25% chance of missing that the other team has. If my team shoots second and we score first, not only have I eliminated one 25% chance of a miss, the other team has already missed a 75% chance of its own score. ---
**Author:** ![OldGuy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/3bc359/32.png) [@OldGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OldGuy)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2016, 8:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ways-to-get-rid-of-penalty-kicks-to-decide-a-game/758568/100 "2016-06-30T20:43:05Z")
> [@ISiddiqui](#): > > In elimination games in tournaments which are a very, very small amount of games played during a year. And most of those games aren’t decided by PKs. It’s completely irrelevant that elimination games are a very small percentage of games or that tie-breaking is required in only a small fraction of elimination games. We’re discussing ways that we might change only the tie-breaking procedure. It will not affect those other games at all. The only relevant question is: You’re in an elimination game and you need a decision (even if the decision is no one wins and no one advances). The 90 minutes + stoppage time have ended. The game is currently tied. How do you wish to proceed? PKs is the current answer. Is it the best one? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ways-to-get-rid-of-penalty-kicks-to-decide-a-game/758568.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ways-to-get-rid-of-penalty-kicks-to-decide-a-game/758568.md?page=6)