Friday 22 June 2012

Football - Alternative to Penalties

This blog post will be quite out of character for me, as football isn't really something I'm into. I guess Liz watching it because the Euro 2012 is on got me thinking a little. In particular about resolving draws. 

Even with my limited knowledge of football, I know there are a few different ways to attempt to resolve a draw, the most common being with penalties. I can't remember where, but I recall hearing that deciding a game on penalties is somewhat underwhelming, and at the very least not a proper display of the teams skill (it is a team game), putting the focus instead on the goalkeeper, and one other player at a time. 


My somewhat out there change to deciding by penalties would be to continue playing, but every 10 minutes each team has to take one player off, and the winner is the first player to score a goal (I think some variants refer to this as a "golden goal"). This way, teams are still playing football, but the longer they play, the fewer other players there are to get in the way :-) 


There would also be a somewhat strategic element for the managers - do they take off defensive or offensive players? If the former they might be more likely to score, but they risk a lower defence to have a goal scored against them. 


Hey, at least it would be a little bit more interesting than penalties...


Another way could be to introduce an additional ball every ten minutes until someone scores, but that is getting into the realms of being quite silly...

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