I was talking with my wife the otherday about how awful PK's deciding a game were, so we tried thinking up another way to decide the ending. What about having each team take corner kicks to decide the game (after OT of course). Each team tries to score off corners. If the defense clears the ball past say a 25 yrd mark on the touch line then they clear it, and the play ends. The team that was on defense now takes a corner. Keep rotating this 'till a team scores. If the first team to go scores the other gets a chance to match it (unlike the NFL). This would involve more of a team effort and require more skill then the PK. Maybe MLS could use it next year in the playoffs. Couldn't be any worse than some of the other gimmicks theyv'e done in the past. Big drawback I see is there would be a greater risk of injury, and maybe it would take too long for a team to put one in the net. Maybe cut it down to 8 a side, so as not to clog the field.
i think they should see which team can juggle the ball more. pick 11 guys, let each guy juggle as much as they can, add up the totals and whamo... a new cup champion.
And now for a serious answer as to why this would be a bad idea...... Consider this: The leaguewide average in MLS for 2003 was about 3 goals scored for every 100 corner kicks attempted. Even assuming that teams could bring up all of their players in an effort to attempt to score on corner kick attempts in this proposed system, it would take WAY too long to settle anything. This proposed solution would take us to the opposite extreme of penalty kicks. Using corner kicks to settle draws would take forever. Reducing teams to eight a side (or some other arbitrary number) as part of the 'corner kick solution' is just a contrived way to force the action. There is no guarantee that the teams will score at a higher percentange off corners with fewer players on the field. Plus, all of the soccer traditionalists would HATE this.... perhaps even more than the now-defunct shootout. Which leads me to this question......how would this be better than using PKs? Or, even better, how would this be better than just simply bringing back the shootout?
One v. One The proposal to stage unearned Corner Kicks to decide a match after 30 minutes of scorless OT rather than staging unearned PKs seems to derive from a desire to maintain a team effort to decide a game. But honestly, individual efforts often make the difference. One player can blow a clearance and lose a game, or one player can hit an amazing strike to finish it off. Or a goalie can commit a gaff and end the whole thing. If, over the course of two full hours, team play has not given rise to a goal, and no individual performance has emerged to produce a winner, the players will be forced to deal with the enourmous pressure of a 1v1 situation. Consider the shooters. At least 2 of those guys couldn't expect to be hitting PKs in regulation time. Only in a tie breaker will they be expected to pull one off. The pressure can be so amazing that guys like Baggio or Platini actually miss. It's an unfortunate way to decide a final, particularly in a 0-0 game, but there is something a shootout has that you can't find in any other part of the game. A keeper can WIN a game in a shootout. In regulation, that's only possible if stoppage time has ended and the keeper actually catches the ball. A mere deflection will likely result in a live ball that can still be knocked in.
not pk's, not ck's, but... ...in the penalty box, 2 attackers versus 2 defenders plus a goalkeeper. the attackers have to put the ball in the net before the defenders or goalkeeper clear the ball out of the box or out of bounds. each time a goal is scored or the ball is cleared, a round is completed. but where would the ball start? at the top of the box? at a corner of the box? and should there be a time limit? are those shootout clocks still lying around somewhere? or did they sell the parts for scrap? i digress...
Personally I think 90 minutes is just fine. The overtime doesn't add anything. I think MLS would be better served using that 30 minutes for pre and post game shows. That's a lot of airtime for educating the TV watching sports fan masses.
I wasn't implying doing away with ties, I prefer the traditional 3 pts for a win, 1 for a tie, I was just talking about games where you have to have a winner, but that stat on scoring on corners settles that for me. Mostly just stating that I hate seeing PK's crown a championship and invite anyway to improve the endings to championship or knock-out games.
Don't laugh - but I've thought before that MLS-style shootouts would be more interesting than pk's to resolve games. A little more skill involved for both keeper and shooter.
Actually, in the context of the history of the sport, 3 points for a win is a fairly recent change. It was less than 10 years ago, in 1994, when this change was made in the World Cup finals. (Even it's first experimental use goes back only about 20 years in England.) I'm just trying to point out that good ideas can become new "traditions" quickly enough... Personally, I'd rather see the playoffs change so that (as in Mexico) lower seeded teams would have to actually defeat higher seeded teams in order to to advance--in the case of a tie the higher seed would advance. I find almost all overtime/PK rules to distract from the intensity of the 90 minute game itself.
Well, that would pretty much eliminate the "Etch is worthless" posts on the DCU boards, as his "form" this season has been well suited to these situations. Double
Come on folks, let's get with the times here. Each team sends out one player to play FIFA 2003. Most of the MLS stadiums already have giant video displays so the crowd can watch and cheer. This may be just the thing that MLS needs to turn today's youth soccer player into a fan for life.