Nothing in football compares to the disappointment of losing a penalty shootout.
It’s cruel and unkind - and that’s just for the fans.
For players it’s a nerve-shredding experience
and failure can sometimes leave an indelible stain on a career.
So, surely there must be a more equitable way of deciding a game when two teams can’t be separated?
First, a recap of some of the alternatives to penalty shootouts,
or at least tweaks to it, that have been tried in the past.
In the 1990s, the Golden Goal was introduced to create sudden-death
extra-time. It meant that any goal scored instantly ended the game and while the 1996
and 2000 European Championship finals were decided that way, it was generally disliked
for creating overly-cautious playing styles and boring, risk-averse football.
The Silver Goal wasn’t much better. That rule meant that if a team was ahead at the
end of the first-half of extra-time, then the game would finish and they would win. If not,
a normal period of extra time would follow and then, if necessary, penalties.
But none of these ideas stuck and football’s tie-breaking rule has reverted to what it was.
There have also been attempts to alter the penalty shootout itself. MLS dallied with a
running penalty, which was last in 1999, and minor competitions have experimented
with changing the sequencing of kicks, but that hasn’t captured the imagination either.
There are also a collection of theoretical alternatives that
have been proposed from time-to-time, but never adopted or properly trialled.
Continuous extra-time has been among those, but that would be an unappealing physical
proposition for players and – most likely – very boring for supporters. It’s a non-starter.
A more creative concept is the so-called
“one-player-off” form of extra-time. Its basic premise is that during extra-time,
one player from each side is removed from the field at particular intervals, thereby creating
space and opportunity until – eventually – a goal is scored and the game would end.
It would be effective, but possibly also comedic in a way. Watching exhausted players
slogging their way across a full-sized pitch in an eight vs eight, or seven vs seven game
might be a bit too slapstick for a World Cup semi-final or a Champions League knockout game.
A more imaginative solution emerged in 2008. It was the result of an independent project
Entitled ADG – or Attacker Defender Goalkeeper – and it offered a new
spin on the traditional penalty shootout. In essence, it called for an attacker to
be given the ball 32 yards from goal and to face a single defender and goalkeeper.
The attacking player would then have 20 seconds to score a goal. Each team would
have five attempts, one after the other and with different players in the various roles,
until eventually a winner would emerge.
According to the leader of the project, Tim Farrell, ADG would provide a “better showcase
of the game” than the penalty shootout. By reducing individual culpability, it would
also minimize the psychological damage and abuse that players often suffer for making mistakes.
Styled like a mini-game from the FIFA series,
it seems more likely to be accepted by younger fans. For traditionalists, however, and despite
its altruistic intentions, its many moving parts might be a hard sell.
But it’s probably as close as anyone has come to constructing a workable alternative.
Other options, such as using shots-on-goal or disciplinary records as tie-breakers
are too dull to be practical. They’re too transactional and not sporting enough in nature.
Other options are just unrealistic. The penalty shootout dates back to 1970 and prior to its
conception games were either settled by drawing lots or simply replaying the match. The 1968
European Championship semi-final between Italy and the Soviet Union, for instance,
was decided by a coin toss. Clearly that would be completely unworkable in the modern era and
given how congested the football calendar already is, replays wouldn’t work either.
There’s no suggestion that penalties are going anywhere soon. After the 2010 World Cup, however,
there was a semi-serious attempt to find an alternative. In response to a dour tournament,
then-FIFA president Sepp Blatter constructed a Footballing Taskforce with the aim of
restoring football’s spectacle. On the agenda was finding a replacement for the penalty shootout
and Blatter even appointed a litany of former greats to the committee,
including Franz Beckenbauer, Pele and Bobby Charlton.
Blatter wanted a way of preventing games from being settled ‘one-on-one’. He thought
penalties took away football’s essence. His committee never achieved anything
meaningful, though, and the penalty shootout never really came under threat. And perhaps
that’s because, whatever its flaws might be, it has unique advantages in football.
It’s definitive and uncontroversial.
The ball either goes in or it doesn’t. It’s not subjective, it’s free from accusations of
bias or poor officiating, and even hyper-tribal fans are unable to argue with the results that
it produces. In that sense, it might even be considered perfect for the role it performs.