I favour sudden death, only for real. Let them play until somebody scores, shooting one random player on each team every 5 minutes.
The obvious solution is to make the goals bigger. You don’t actually have to eliminate penalty kicks, just make them decide games less often by reducing the number of tie games.
But there are important religious reasons why we cannot make football a higher scoring game.
(Reads the suggestions in this thread so far)
OOOH! I KNOW!!!
How about… after every 2 minutes in extra time a midget rodeo clown is added onto the field and tries to grab the ball and hide it under his shirt?
Then, if it’s still tied after two extra time periods, the pitch is set on fire except for two narrow strips. Half of the Rockettes are inserted onto one non-burning strip and the other half to the other strip. The soccer ball is replaced by a beach ball and when one of the Rockettes manages to balance it on her nose for at least 30 seconds, the team that she thinks has cuter players wins!!!
It’s okay that PK’s are like a coin flip. Remember, the match is already over and it ended in a draw. The two teams had their chance to find a winner and they couldn’t manage it. Whoever “wins” the penalty kicks doesn’t actually win the game. It is a draw. Period.
All that is needed at that point is to find a team to advance to the next round. Taking PK’s is more like soccer than a drawing of lots or a coin flip. Close enough.
Some of the wacky ideas in this thread would make a little more sense (but only a very little) if finding a winner to the soccer game was the intention. But it’s not. Soccer games can end in draws. Even knock-out games. Deal with it.
Man. I sure does like me some of them home runs!! Why. oh why doesn’t MLB bring in the fences about 100 feet? I could see me a home run on just about every fella’s at bat!!
And those slam dunks in the NBA are the SHIZZZZLE!!!1 I just can’t understand why the league doesn’t lower the rims to 8 feet. They have to know that if they did there could be a slam dunk on nearly every single play!
the underlying problem is the lack of goals. That creates so many ties. But as stated above, nobody will dare try to change that.
The problem with continuing to play until there is a winner is that the longer the game goes on the less likely it gets that anyone can score at all. Most people don’t realize how tiring soccer is, even for world class athletes. You are really not going to accomplish anything by extending the game further other than get some terrible soccer and risk the health of the players. If people are so against PK shoot outs I think the only option worth considering is simply declaring a tie and playing again a few days later. Pointlessly making players with nothing left in the tank continue to play with weird rule changes is not an improvement.
As someone here put it brilliantly, low scoring is a feature of the game, not a fault.
I really never thought of it that way but you are absolutely right. Considering how scared and defensive teams get in extra time some of them deserve a coin flip.
I like this actually. Alternate set pieces. This could be cool.
Yes! Let corner kicks decide the game, rather than penalty kicks.
That shootout thing after extra-time does not have penalty kicks involved in it. It is made up of “Kicks from the Penalty Mark”.
That may seem like pedanticism but there are some important distinctions.
1.) Penalty kicks can involve other players coming in and scoring a goal after a deflection from the goalkeeper–KFTPM can not.
2.) During a penalty kick the clock is running, the game is taking place and, after the ball is kicked, the ball is in play so fouls (even another penalty kick) can take place. In KFTPM the ball is neither in nor out of play because the game is over, therefore there can be no fouls during a KFTPM. There CAN be misconduct, however, For example, after a shooter takes his kick the goalkeeper could run out and hit the kicker in the face.
This would result in the keeper being sent off but it would not be a foul. There can only be fouls when the ball is in play and the ball can’t be in play if the game is technically over.
As an aside, IF a goalkeeper was sent off during KFTPM he could NOT be replaced by the back-up goaltender–even if his team still had a substitution left. Only players on the field at the end of extra-time can take participate in KFTPM.
The only exception to this is if a goalkeeper is injured and his team still has a substitution available.
That could take an exceedingly long time. For a period from 2011 to 2014 in English Premier League the overall scoring percentage on corner kicks was about 3%. That’s only slightly better than settling basketball games with half court shots.
Not a judgement, just FYI.
I was thinking about it a little more and could see it working like this. Teams would take turns doing:
- A throwin from the left/right side (or maybe a free kick from the left/right side of the box)
- A corner kick from the left/right side
- A penalty kick.
The ball stays in play until the team scores, the goalie grabs it, it goes out of bounds, crosses midfield, or the ref calls a penalty. There would also be a time limit to prevent stalling (30 seconds?)
Penalties:
- The card status of the players carries over from regular play.
- A player who gets a 2nd yellow will be removed from the field
- A player who commits a red card penalty will be removed from the field and the other team will get a penalty kick.
By having play stop when a penalty is called, it will discourage the offensive team from flopping to draw the penalty. They could do that, but then they’d waste their turn to score. Defensive players would need to not risk a penalty to avoid going down a man. And flagrant fouls risk giving the other team a chance for a penalty kick.
By using a variety of set plays, it would allow the teams to use the same technique and strategy they use during normal game with higher chances to score. If they are still tied after doing the full round, the round could be repeated or they could fall back to just penalty kicks. Or repeat the round but the defending side has to remove 2 players at each step.
I don’t feel like I’m going out on a limb by suggesting that the Sudden Death Corner Kicks idea would likely create an increase in head injuries, both concussions and sub-concussive impacts. Players walking away rubbing their skulls where they’ve banged it on an opponent’s skull, elbow, shoulder, etc. during a set piece are a common enough sight already without adding in the desperation and reckless abandon of a sudden death scenario. Soccer has thus far managed to skate away from quite the public beating the NFL is taking over CTE, but some articles have crept in there and I don’t think this is a good time to introduce a change in play that might increase rather than decrease head impacts.
What Chizzuk said. 22 desperate, tired players fighting for position is a recipe for fights and injuries.
I’d have the shootout on schedule but make winning it worth worth 0.5 of a goal and the right to choose which side to kick off extra extra time, then have a 15 minute rest and another 30 minutes extra time. First extra extra time goal is worth 1 goal and stops the game.
I’m in the ‘PKs are the worst, except for all others’ camp.
One thing to remember, if you want to just let them keep playing until a goal, is that we only need to resolve ties in tournaments-- in most leagues, tie games are perfectly OK in the regular season. And tournaments are exactly when we don’t want players getting too tired. Not just for the game they’re playing in, but because they have to play again in a couple days. A four-overtime game wouldn’t mean just that we’d have to see Messi stumbling around after trying to play two and half hours, but we’d see him and his teammates stumbling around exhausted from minute one of his next game (and most like getting soundly spanked by a fresh Trinidad and Tobago team or something). Heck, I bet in the group rounds of a tournament, we’d see managers making secret deals to let one team or the other win after one or two overtimes, just so they’d both have a chance in their next game.
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 corner kick ideas are interesting, but like PKs, the fact remains you’re deciding the outcome of the game by something other than, well, straight up soccer.
Quercus makes a good point about exhausting players, but it doesn’t stop the National Hockey League from allowing unlimited playoff overtime, and teams survive it. An elite athlete should not take a week to recover from running around a lot. The real problem with unlimited soccer overtime is simply that very few goals are scored, and you’d run the risk of games being interminable. There is a genuine risk of having games go six hours. Nobody wants that - **unless you made an exception for the final. **
The PK system is arbitrary to the point of unfairness but people do like it.