Everyone agrees that deciding soccer matches with penalty kicks is a bad idea – everybody, that is, except Egyptians. Egypt won last year’s African Cup of Nations and Egypt’s Ahly captured their last two African Super Cups, the last being two weeks ago, by winning penalty shootouts.
Still, it s a miserable way to end a match. Players and coaches spend their entire careers trying to figure out how to score using 11 men and how not to allow a goal using 11 men. So to arrive at a situation in which the final outcome of a game or a championship – the finals of two World Cups have gone to penalty shootouts – is decided by a one-on-one situation doesn’t make sense.
The idea is so bad that the International Football Association Board, the body which is in charge of the laws, cannot bring itself to say that a team has beaten another on penalty kicks. It is technically incorrect to say, for example, that Egypt beat Cote d’Ivoire on penalty kicks or that Cote d’Ivoire lost to Egypt on penalty kicks. The technically correct usage is: Egypt advanced over Cote d’Ivoire on penalty kicks or Cote d’Ivoire was eliminated by Egypt on penalty kicks.
Various alternatives to penalty shootouts have been suggested but all have been knocked down. If the match is still even at the end of extra-time, the team winning the most corner kicks or taking the most on-target shots on goal, or with the fewest cautions and sending-offs should advance. Or the teams should play on with reductions in the number of players on the pitch at regular time intervals, creating more space and therefore more goal-scoring opportunities. Or the number of players could increase until the match is settled.
Another suggestion is that the teams should hold the penalty kick shootout ahead of extra-time so that they will know what will happen if extra-time play does not break the draw.
Both the golden goal and silver goal rules represented efforts to reduce the number of matches going to penalty kick shootouts. But they were quickly quashed.
American soccer experimented when the shootout consisted of a player starting with the ball 35 yards from the goal and having five seconds to try to score a goal, with as many touches as he wished during that time span. This experiment was abandoned in 2000.
Replays are no longer acceptable in an age when a huge organizational apparatus and worldwide TV coverage accompany every major international football tournament and when time is at a premium for players, officials, fans and media representatives.
Penalty shootouts are better than the arbitrary toss of the coin like in 1968 when Italy reached the European Championship final against the USSR. And they are definitely dramatic.
Remember the Cote d’Ivoire-Cameroon quarter-final in Cairo last year? The one in which all 22 players on the pitch scored their spot kicks before Eto o missed his second attempt and Drogba settled the tie at 12-11. That was, by the way, the best percentage of successful penalty kicks at a continental championship.
But shootouts still remain an unsatisfactory way to decide a football match. Soccer is a game of skill that tests endurance, finesse and teamwork, and shootouts are a cheap way to come to a decision. The shootout format eliminates defensive play, passing and coaching – all of which are key elements of the game. It becomes simply a system of chance.
Shootouts do not determine which team is better. They only test the football skills of individual players rather than the team, and that it is little better than a lottery contest.
Penalty shootouts can be thrilling, and in Egypt’s case beneficial, but they are not fair.
