Yes, exactly. It's an acquired skill, just like any other part of football. It's not luck if you excel at it. Germany has won 6 of 7 PK shootouts, with the last and only loss 42 years ago. Nobody wants to go up against Germany in PKs..
The mindset of a whole team changes in the last 10 minutes of any match. It almost becomes less important to get an actual goal rather than rack up chances in 'your approximated' shot distance. If you believe that would never be a tactic employed by coaches you don't understand football.
Yeah and teams desperately trying to score goals in the last ten minutes would be bad how? I can’t believe you are arguing that going forward to shoot on goal is a bad idea. You do realize that a shot on goal from inside the area ha a decent chance of resulting in a goal and breaking the tie through scoring a goal, right?
And it’s a skill that has zero application in 99.5% of actual play. Brilliant. Practicing skills that are irrelevant Might as well play a game of basketball or ping pong to resolve ties
Interestingly, I took a look at who would have won today: Probably russia They had 35% of possession but seven shots on goal compared to 3 for Croatia. I don’t know how many were from distance and would be excluded. So much for the theory that counter attacking teams couldn’t win this tie break!
You are talking about changing the sport. Where coaches design their tactic around things that are not actual goals. Players that usually might take a player on or lay it off have it drilled into them to take the shot no matter what just to strike up a shot on the board. It COMPLETELY changes the way the game is coached...especially in knockout games. The idea is honourable, but it would be twisted into something that is not the same game.
And packing eleven player into the box hoping for a 0-0 draw and PKs doesn’t? It would be twisted into a game where teams actually try to score goals with decent shots Players will always try to score goals if they’re in the area. The notion that they might *gasp* actually shoot at the goal instead of trying to score is both novel and something they shouldn’t be doing is pretty silly. As in, it makes you laugh to think that players don’t pretty much already try to get shots off to score already by shooting at the goal when they’re in a good position to do so. I know. What a concept! Shooting at the goal when you’re in good position instead of passing around a bunch! Whoever would do that? Because even with the tie break scoring an actually goal is waaaaay more valuable than racking up shots inside the area. It wouldn’t change the tactics at all except it might make teams less cute about dicking around in the area
Do you know the best way to encourage goals? To say most goals win in 90 minutes. As soon as you add secondary winning conditions (shots\corners\possession) in 90\120 minutes you have changed the sport.
If you wanted to avoid the penalty shoot out and lessen the incentive of a side to look for a draw in football to perhaps win on the penalty lottery, the best way would be to award the match to the side that achieved the result with the fewest negative points based on fouls/cautions and red cards in that same match. While in theory this would be the correct answer, the reason I don't advocate it is because it will only increase the influence of the referee and any mistakes he has made. Maybe I could live with this rule if the "foul points" were to be calculated after the game by a referee committee and after carefully scrutiny of each decision and non-decision made by the CR. While I am not sure this would work, it does seem clear to me that a result achieved by a lot of deliberate fouling and unsportsmanlike behavior isn't worth as much as the same result without such antics. If this rule existed, perhaps Ghana would have advanced instead of Uruguay in 2010 and England wouldn't need a penalty shoot out to eliminate Colombia.
It has determined who advances and who goes home in 1/3rd of the knockout round matches at this World Cup. I get it that you don't like them, but it is absurd to argue that they are irrelevant and don't need to be practiced.
Or PKs. PKs is a secondary winning condition. And it is a piss poor one compared to the alternative, as we know because it REALLY distorts the game in big ways
Or 1-1. But sure. Having Russia or some other lesser team coming in saying “we aren’t even going to try to score. We just want to get to PKs” is something I find it incomprehensible that people defend But whatever. PKs suck but you all love it. Dumb but then millions love Trump too, so what do I know
Look, I made my point several times now, I leave it at that. Now you’re throwing cultural stereotypes at people and this is where it stops for me. Nothing good can possibly come from this anymore The thing is, Guinho, if you weren’t so overly agressive towards everyone, you would actually be a pretty good discussion partner for football
Oh the stupid it burns!!!! They only need to be practiced, because of an otherwise irrelevant tie breaker! No other reason. None. The exact same logic would apply if we had the goal keeper play ping pong. Then you’d say “practicing ping pong is critical because we use it as a tie breaker!!!” While utterly ignoring that no part of the actua game involves ping pong
And I responded to you decently enough but you colleagues got pretty insulting. Yeah you made your incorrect points repeatedly (if you don’t want me commenting on your missing a critical part of the proposal, then read more carefully and certainly don’t make the same error repeatedly) But at the end of the day, you don’t have much of an argument
Your concept distorts the actual 90 minutes. 1 team gets instructions from the bench that they have met your secondary condition of 6 shots (in the area) to 3 in the 75th minute. They are then instructed to pass around at the back and keep possession for the last 15 minutes..even though it's 1-1 on the scoreboard. Can you not see how it will actually lead to games becoming worse and less attacking at the end of games?
That’s a decent point. Much better than the “teams will shoot over the bar or from distance” points. One issue is that teams do that now. Team that prefers to try to defend a lead or push for PKs will stall roll around, time waste, etc. You saw what Russia did for a lot more than the last 15 minutes against Spain? What would change is who is doing the kicking around. However, I think you’re right that we would see more evenly matched teams do this. Now only really weak teams do this. We still need something that gives the advantage to the team that attacks to prevent anyone trying to play for PKs
3 quick points: 1- I actually sympathize with the problem you mention about the penalty lottery creating its own perverse incentive. But I don't like your solution. 2- I think you are unfair to Russia. Against Spain, Russia had the option of either chasing the ball and let Spain have possession anyway, only with a lot more open space to create chances. This is what can make Spain sometimes look very good. Or to give them the ball anyway and tell them now use the ball to do something really neat and useful. Which they didn't. Against Croatia, Russia didn't bunker. In fact, they should have bunkered after being up 1:0 but didn't. The 1:1 equalizer from Croatia was in a situation where Russian players were out of position with few players back to defend. 3- If a game between two sides ends in a draw after ET, the team that deserves to win is the one which accomplished the result without cheating as much as its opponent. In other words, the one with fewer fouls and less unsportsmanlike behavior. How to give that side the win without making the referee even more influential is the real issue to me.
I'm not sure there is away. The golden goal has been tried in tournaments to encourage attacking. It kind of worked to start with..but then teams got even more scared and defended more. I think the powers that be realise that Penalties is actually an added bonus for excitement for the neutrals.
Just to add a few more observations - not every shot is clearcut as to whether or not it is on target. Goalkeepers often make saves where due to the bend of the shot it becomes tricky for observers to determine with certainty whether it was on target or not. At the moment the stats counters simply guess in such instances but imagine deciding a WC final by these guesses - what about blocked shots? Do they count? If so then what about shots that get blocked mere centimetres after the strike? Is that really a shot? And if it is how on earth does anybody actually determine whether it would have been on target? If it only counts if the block is further away from the shooter then who determines what distance? Heck, how would you even attempt to measure that distance in the shot count meter? See what kind of nonsense we’re getting into with this? - ever heard of Gaelic football? In that sport they use both soccer goals and shots. A goal is three points, a shot is one point. Guess what happens in tight games between even teams? The teams usually don’t even try and score a goal but do lots of shots. Yes, they count less but they’re so much easier to execute than scoring a goal. Doing lots of shots and ignoring goals is a much better winning strategy in tight games
That’s not true at all. Penalty kicks due to an infraction in the box are an integral part of the game, and are usually practiced by two or three players on a team. In a shootout you are just adding a couple more players to those who would prepare to them in regular time. You act like PKs are something beamed down from outer space. You see them taken in games all the time.
Not as often as shots on goal. Nor are they as integral. Arguments that don't hold water: 1) teams will shoot from distance or over the bar (wouldn't count) 2) PKs involve scoring goals, whereas working to create chances somehow isn't part of the game 3) SOG inside the area are arbitrary (so are PKs, but unlike PKs they reward actually attacking) Argument that does hold water: 1) a team facing a tied scoreline, but an advantage in SOG inside the 18 would behave like a team with a 1 goal advantage now, and that's perverse incentive. (They'd still run the risk of a team with a one goal lead now, namely the other team scores or gets shots on goal. Still, arguably one that would arise more often than the "we're overmatched, so pack the box and pray for PK's Russia-style") Both have match distorting effects. One would probably be smaller but more common, the other bigger, but mostly between totally mismatched teams. We need a better tie break than either. I think we all know PKs are terrible because they encourage bunkering, but anything tied to attacking soccer would be gameable. Maybe the only way to go would be to either have replays or do it baseball style with ongoing overtimes and more and more subs. Those are impossible to work with TV schedules though. If I figure out a better solution, you know I'll bring it.
You could see they were getting tired right before the second Croatia goal went in. Respect to Russia for getting the late equalizer and sending it to pks