The Penalty Problem

In the past week we've had a lot of football. The 4 Copa America Quarter Finals, the 2 Copa America Semi Finals and a Women's World Cup Final, just to name a few. Of these 7 critical games, 5 of them went into extra time and of those 5, 4 of them went to Penalty Shootouts. So in one week, we had 7 matches that helped decide the eventual outcome of tournaments and more than half were decided by the dreaded shootout. Personally, I love shootouts, the excitement is unrivaled in sports and it tests the composure of players when everything is on the line. When is it too much though? The concept of the penalty shootout has worked so well for so long because we usually only see them in small doses. Between World Cups 1986 and 2010 we've had an average of 3 penalty shootouts per World Cup. 7 World Cups, 21 Shootouts, 112 Knockout Games, That's less than 1 in every 5 World Cup games.

Why are we now seeing more and more penalty shootouts, but why? I've come up with 3 main reasons for this. (1) Parity (2) Conservative Play (3) Refereeing Decisons. Parity is definitely alive in the international game. There was once a clear seperation between the elite nations of the world and everyone else, that seperation is now blurred. Recent penalty shootout matchups that potetially show parity are
Brazil .vs. Paraguay in the Copa America 2011 Quarter Finals and Venezuela vs Paraguay in the Copa America 2011 Semi Finals. In the first matchup we have one of the world's elite in Brazil being held to a goalless draw and eventually losing in a Shootout, in the other we have traditional regional minnows Venezuela holding Paraguay and almost actually winning. In another example involving Paraguay we have the World Cup 2010 Second Round matchup vs Japan, a team that has not ever really been a real Quarter Final quality team. Yet still they were just a shootout away from reaching that milestone just a year ago. 

The fact that Paraguay were involved in so many penalty shootouts may point to another one of my listed reasons, conservative play. Certainly the fact that Paraguay has been in shootouts with everyone from Japan and Venezuela to Brazil may have something to do with their style of play. They may not be intentionally trying to play for penalties but their defensive style of play may give weaker teams the opportunity to. One small fact about Paraguay in those last 3 shootouts is that they've won all 3. They're becoming the Germany of South America when it comes to penalty shootouts and if they're that good at it, why fight the possibility of it? Certainly the factor of conservative play has been around for quite some time where penalties are concerned. That's where the biggest problem lies with the concept of a penalty shootout.


Vizcarrondo

Refereeing decisions certainly play a part in the number of extra time games we seem to be having. What's new though? A missed penalty call there, a disallowed goal here...it's all been seen in the beautiful game. In the recent Venezuela vs Paraguay game, Oswaldo Vizcarrondo put Venezuela up seemingly only to have the goal disallowed for offside. Here we have a weaker team not going the conservative route and playing for the win and having their goal disallowed for an offside call that was debatable at best. The goal would've made history as Venezuela has never made the Copa America final in history. Now if the call was correct and should've been made I stand corrected. From the replays I've seen though it would be very difficult for me to make that call...but of course, I'm no referee. It just seems to me that the officials are in too much of a hurry to make such calls and in games where goals are hard to come by it makes all the difference.

So what's the alternative? As much as I love penalties, the only real alternative would be to get rid of the concept all together. There's nothing we can do about parity, infact we should welcome it, but conservative play and bad refereeing decisions will happen regardless. At the end of the day, the most important of games should not be decided by penalties. If we were to get rid of shootouts the best alternatives I can think of are Silver Goal and the system the MLS used in its early years. Silver Goal is simple, if one team scores in the 1st half of extra time the other team then has to score before the end of that period for the match to continue. If the other team cannot tie the score by the end of that period of extra time, the team that has the lead is the winner. In this case, if the score is tied after extra time we can then use the penalty shootout to settle things. It would definitely throw conservative play out the window in many situations. The second alternative is the former MLS solution. Not much was good in the first years of the MLS but their way of settling ties were fun and made sense. Instead of 5 standard penalties by both teams, we would have 5 shooting opportunities by both teams. Each player would be given 5 seconds to go 1 on 1 with the keeper and attempt a shot. If no shot was attempted in 5 seconds then it counts the same as a miss. This alternative brings a little more of the game into the decider and would be just as exciting for fans. Regardless, we have penalty shootouts for the near future and there's not much that will be done to change that fact. I just hope we get them in smaller doses, so we can enjoy the novelty and hope the better team wins.