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Abstract

ls devastating. And that’s why teams in a title match often play so stringently, sacrificing attacking intent for staunch defense where necessary.</p><p id="af89">It’s a classic case of risk aversion. Teams want to win, sure, but what they <i>really</i> want is not to lose. So close to the title, teams can practically taste it, can see themselves raising the cup victoriously. They dare not do anything to blow their opportunity. And that often leads to a fear of losing and sends both teams into defensive shells.</p><p id="595a">Baseball teams can’t just sacrifice a hitter and add someone in the field. Basketball teams could leave a defender back and play four-on-five but it’d be suicide. But in soccer, it’s perfectly normal strategy to see teams drop nine or ten of their eleven players back defensively, dig in their heels, and hope for one magic counter-attacking moment.</p><p id="c8df">The “too much defense” problem is amplified even further in a knockout tournament, where variance is the name of the game. Again sports like basketball and baseball offset the variance problem some by having teams play in series so the better team is more likely to win. In soccer a team that knows it is the underdog has a pretty clear tried-and-true formula — bunker down, play tough defense, keep it close, and hope for a lucky bounce or a magical moment. This helps create more Cinderella stories but it can make for some dreadful risk-averse soccer.</p><p id="d81d">There’s one other hidden problem that contributes to the ugly style of play in soccer finals — every player on the pitch has a yellow card to burn, so the games are often very physical in nature, tending towards downright dirty. Over the course of a longer tournament, this problem is often eliminated because players can receive suspensions for yellow card accumulation. But in the final game of the year, no one cares who gets suspended for a “next game” so everyone can play a little more aggressive defensively and continue to nick and foul players all game with little threat of meaningful punishment.</p><p id="57cc">Ask Lionel Messi if that sort of thing matters. Messi’s Argentina teams have made it to the finals of three straight major tournaments — the World Cup in 2014 and Copa América in 2015 and 2016 — only to finish runners-up all three times. Messi has often had magical runs along the way but always seems to come up empty in the final match.</p><p id="6a49">Maybe that shouldn’t be so surprising. At 5'7 Messi is one of the smaller figures on the pitch. Over a full tournament, his speed and quickness can tear the defense apart, but in a winner-take-all match, the defense is happy to foul, foul, foul the diminutive Messi all game long, making the game physical and slow and choppy. This is ultimately the right strategy for an underdog team, but it’s terrible to play in and worse to watch.</p><p id="52ad">All of it ultimately leads to the biggest soccer matches in the world often being played at a snail’s pace with a physical style, frequently heading to a turgid extra-time period that gets even more tired and sluggish. With everything on the line, instead of heightened excitement and game-winning goals, we often get the exact opposite. Teams are more risk-averse than ever, fatigued players even more defensive and cautious, ultimately sending the match to the dreaded penalty kick scenario — fun for casual fans maybe, but an awful way to determine a champion for any number of reasons.</p><p id="02b6">In short, it’s a giant bummer.</p><p id="6df7">So is there any way to solve the soccer finals problem? There may not be a way to stop teams from fouling or playing extra defensively — strategy is strategy after all. Certainly we can encourage the referees to call a tighter match to prevent some of the game’s best from getting beaten up, but no one wants a whistle every 60 seconds either.</p><p id="555d">But what about the structure of the final — is there any possible change there?</p><h2 id="2859">Play two home-and-home legs instead of one winner-take-all match</h2><p id="a28d">Many tournaments like MLS Cup and UEFA Champions League use a two-match format for each pairing, with each team getting a game at home. That leaves more time to score, and it means teams can venture out and be a bit more aggressive.</p><p id="dac6">The problem is marketing. Two legs usually mean the matches are played on each team’s home field, great for those two teams but not so much for the big stadium chosen to host the final months in advance. It’s also a problem for advertising. What happens if a team wins the first leg 3–0 and just has to hang on for 90 minutes in the second leg? It may determine a champion fairly, but how many people are turning on the TV for that?</p><h2 id="ea5a">Bring back golden goal in extra time</h2><p id="a206">Golden goal is the soccer version of sudden death — when a match goes to extra ti

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me, the rule is simple. Whoever scores first wins. The NFL recently eliminated sudden death because of the huge advantage it gave to teams receiving the kickoff, but that’s not a problem in soccer where the team on the kickoff has no real significant advantage. Sure a team could score a wonky goal off a deflection or defensive error and the match would be over, but that same terrible goal could have provided the outcome in regular full time too (and often does) so it’s hardly a reason to avoid golden goal.</p><p id="689c">The upside of golden goal is that it’s no longer advantageous for teams to just sit back and play tough defense and wait for the 50–50 proposition of penalty kicks because they will never come. The goal — the win — must be earned.</p><p id="f739">The downside is fatigue. The match could end in 10 extra minutes, but it could also carry on for another 90 or even further if no goal comes. Tired players are not peak performers and, even worse, they’re prone to injury. Indeterminate golden goal is just too risky for the players’ health, and fans aren’t going to stick around for hours waiting either.</p><h2 id="be84">Golden goal, but for only the 30 added minutes</h2><p id="a6fa">Ok, so this might work. Only 30 minutes of golden goal time could mitigate the problem of endless extra time and health risk.</p><p id="6a83">But wait, the original problem is now back. If there’s only 30 minutes of golden goal play, the underdog is likely to dig in their heels and hold on for penalties once again. After all, any goal in extra time is already akin to a golden goal, not a guarantee of victory but a pretty big boost. Golden goal for only a defined period doesn’t help much.</p><p id="f4f2">Maybe some smaller changes could help.</p><h2 id="9bf6">Add 3 extra-time substitutions and an additional “half time” period</h2><p id="2070">This would at least help with fatigue and player health risk. Players would have a 15-minute break between the 90th minute and the start of extra time, enough time for brief treatment and a short respite. And the additional substitutions would allow spent players to be subbed off and might afford managers a chance to make one or two aggressive moves to go for the win.</p><p id="83d6">Of course the extra-time substitutions might be held by a savvy manager until the 119th minute before putting in his or her best penalty takers, so…</p><h2 id="b505">Anyone on the active roster can take a penalty kick</h2><p id="1bd0">Teams often leave fatigued top players on the pitch far too long just because they need them out there for a potential penalty kick. Why not let any player on the active roster take a penalty? If a manager wants to sub off a star for fresher but inexperienced legs, great. If he or she wants to waste a roster spot to stash a penalty taker, go for it. Extra strategy is good for everyone.</p><p id="5eef">But hey, speaking of extra strategy, how about something totally different?</p><h2 id="75f8">My solution: a version of hockey’s wild 3-on-3 overtime</h2><p id="48c9">Look, the current soccer final set-up clearly isn’t working, so maybe it’s time to think outside the box. One of the best ways to force a game to open up would be to keep the same expansive pitch but fewer players on it, forcing a more open and fluid game.</p><p id="668b">Keep the added extra time and penalty kick set-up as is, but force each team to go down two players at the start of extra time. Now it’s 9v9, a bit more open and free. At halftime of extra time, two more on each team are sacrificed, leaving 7v7 on a wild open pitch for the final 15 minutes. The players would still be exhausted but the open space would provoke many to throw caution to the wind and push forward for a winner.</p><p id="09c1">It would be wild and entertaining, the sort of can’t-miss action that would trend on Twitter and light up cell phones around the world. Hockey 3v3 overtime was odd, but it was crazy entertaining. And think of the strategy as managers are forced to decide whether to sacrifice defenders or attackers, without knowing what the other will do.</p><p id="09d2">And sure, the result would be a game not completely resembling regular soccer, but it’s not like penalty kicks really give us that anyway. At the very least it would mean a better chance of the best players on the pitch using open space, pushing forward, looking for magical championship-winning moment.</p><p id="d1bb">After all, isn’t that what we are all longing for?</p><p id="c1ed"><i>If you enjoyed this, please recommend it by clicking the </i>❤<i> so others can enjoy it too. Follow Brandon on Medium or <a href="https://twitter.com/wheatonbrando">@wheatonbrando</a> for more sports, humor, pop culture, and life musings. Visit the rest of Brandon’s <a href="https://readmedium.com/brandon-anderson-writing-archives-6b3ee1a29301#.6cteu050v">writing archives here</a>.</i></p></article></body>

Why Do All the Big Soccer Finals Suck?

Penalty kicks might be a fun conclusion, but it sure takes a lot of boring soccer to get there…

It’s the 88th minute of the championship match, tie game, just one magical goal away from glory. The tension is high and the stakes are even higher. Everything is on the line. But something’s not right. Instead of pushing forward in waves trying desperately for a title-winning goal, the players are sagging back, passing the ball side to side, killing off the final moments. The game goes to extra time and it’s more of the same. Tired legs pass the ball around and soon it appears inevitable. The championship will be decided by the ultimate lottery — penalty kicks.

If that feels all too familiar, maybe it’s because lately that’s how almost every big soccer final seems to end. Just this weekend two major soccer title matches went to penalties. Seattle and Toronto battled to a 0–0 draw in 120+ minutes in the MLS Cup, and then Stanford and Wake Forest played 120+ scoreless minutes of their own in the NCAA Division I title game.

Two hundred forty minutes of goalless soccer, then the equivalent of a coin flip for the title. Surely we can do better.

The MLS Cup and NCAA D-I championship aren’t the only big soccer matches we’ve seen progress all the way to penalty kicks in 2016. Just take a look at some of the other major title this year:

Copa América Chile 0, Argentina 0

Men’s Olympics Brazil 1, Germany 1

UEFA men’s Champions League Real Madrid 1, Atlético Madrid 1

UEFA women’s Champions League Lyon 1, Wolfsburg 1

Major League Soccer Seattle 0, Toronto 0

National Women’s Soccer League Western New York 2, Washington 2

Men’s NCAA Division I championship Stanford 0, Wake Forest 0

In seven of the biggest soccer matches of the year, the game went to added extra time and then continued to penalty kicks (with the first team winning in each case above). And it wasn’t just that the game came down to the coin-flip penalty kick scenario — it was a lack of much excitement before that.

In 840 minutes of championship “action,” a whopping 10 goals were scored. That’s just one goal every 84 minutes, roughly the equivalent of watching nine excruciating 1–0 matches.

It gets worse. When the title matches went to added extra time — the final minutes of a championship game when any goal is likely a title-winner and everything is on the line at every moment — the games got even duller. In 210 minutes of added extra time, just two goals were scored, both in the same game. The NWSL final was exciting, with a Washington goal in the first minutes of extra time offset by a Western New York goal in the 124th minute sending it to penalties. The other six matches featured no goals at all, nary a real chance in most scenarios. Just long, excruciating, boring soccer.

So why are so many big soccer games going to penalties, and what makes them so dull?

Soccer isn’t the only game littered with ugly game play when everything’s on the line. Game Seven of the NBA Finals saw just one made field goal in the final four and a half minutes, the teams combining to shoot under 40% in the game. Game Seven of the World Series had four errors and saw both otherwise dominant closers implode on the biggest stage. Even when sports that usually rely on playoff series came down to one winner-take-all game, they too tend to get ugly and come down to the final moments.

It’s not difficult to guess why the games tend to get ugly. This is what these players have practiced all year for. It’s the biggest athletic moment of their lives, what they’ve stayed up at night dreaming about for decades. The pressure is immense, and everyone wants to be a hero, but even more, nobody wants to be the goat.

One complicating factor beyond the mental side is physical fatigue. The players are exhausted. They’ve played the entire season or tournament with increasingly intense games and more minutes played than usual, often in a shorter interval with less rest in between. Many of the players are playing through injuries they’ll soon have surgeries on, adrenaline the only thing pushing them through those final minutes. It’s just not realistic to expect fatigued players in that condition to give peak performances.

In soccer, things tend to be amplified even further because of the strategy involved. Two points allowed in first few minutes of a basketball game mean very little, and an early run in baseball is a bummer but hardly backbreaking. But in a soccer title game, almost any goal allowed feels devastating. And that’s why teams in a title match often play so stringently, sacrificing attacking intent for staunch defense where necessary.

It’s a classic case of risk aversion. Teams want to win, sure, but what they really want is not to lose. So close to the title, teams can practically taste it, can see themselves raising the cup victoriously. They dare not do anything to blow their opportunity. And that often leads to a fear of losing and sends both teams into defensive shells.

Baseball teams can’t just sacrifice a hitter and add someone in the field. Basketball teams could leave a defender back and play four-on-five but it’d be suicide. But in soccer, it’s perfectly normal strategy to see teams drop nine or ten of their eleven players back defensively, dig in their heels, and hope for one magic counter-attacking moment.

The “too much defense” problem is amplified even further in a knockout tournament, where variance is the name of the game. Again sports like basketball and baseball offset the variance problem some by having teams play in series so the better team is more likely to win. In soccer a team that knows it is the underdog has a pretty clear tried-and-true formula — bunker down, play tough defense, keep it close, and hope for a lucky bounce or a magical moment. This helps create more Cinderella stories but it can make for some dreadful risk-averse soccer.

There’s one other hidden problem that contributes to the ugly style of play in soccer finals — every player on the pitch has a yellow card to burn, so the games are often very physical in nature, tending towards downright dirty. Over the course of a longer tournament, this problem is often eliminated because players can receive suspensions for yellow card accumulation. But in the final game of the year, no one cares who gets suspended for a “next game” so everyone can play a little more aggressive defensively and continue to nick and foul players all game with little threat of meaningful punishment.

Ask Lionel Messi if that sort of thing matters. Messi’s Argentina teams have made it to the finals of three straight major tournaments — the World Cup in 2014 and Copa América in 2015 and 2016 — only to finish runners-up all three times. Messi has often had magical runs along the way but always seems to come up empty in the final match.

Maybe that shouldn’t be so surprising. At 5'7 Messi is one of the smaller figures on the pitch. Over a full tournament, his speed and quickness can tear the defense apart, but in a winner-take-all match, the defense is happy to foul, foul, foul the diminutive Messi all game long, making the game physical and slow and choppy. This is ultimately the right strategy for an underdog team, but it’s terrible to play in and worse to watch.

All of it ultimately leads to the biggest soccer matches in the world often being played at a snail’s pace with a physical style, frequently heading to a turgid extra-time period that gets even more tired and sluggish. With everything on the line, instead of heightened excitement and game-winning goals, we often get the exact opposite. Teams are more risk-averse than ever, fatigued players even more defensive and cautious, ultimately sending the match to the dreaded penalty kick scenario — fun for casual fans maybe, but an awful way to determine a champion for any number of reasons.

In short, it’s a giant bummer.

So is there any way to solve the soccer finals problem? There may not be a way to stop teams from fouling or playing extra defensively — strategy is strategy after all. Certainly we can encourage the referees to call a tighter match to prevent some of the game’s best from getting beaten up, but no one wants a whistle every 60 seconds either.

But what about the structure of the final — is there any possible change there?

Play two home-and-home legs instead of one winner-take-all match

Many tournaments like MLS Cup and UEFA Champions League use a two-match format for each pairing, with each team getting a game at home. That leaves more time to score, and it means teams can venture out and be a bit more aggressive.

The problem is marketing. Two legs usually mean the matches are played on each team’s home field, great for those two teams but not so much for the big stadium chosen to host the final months in advance. It’s also a problem for advertising. What happens if a team wins the first leg 3–0 and just has to hang on for 90 minutes in the second leg? It may determine a champion fairly, but how many people are turning on the TV for that?

Bring back golden goal in extra time

Golden goal is the soccer version of sudden death — when a match goes to extra time, the rule is simple. Whoever scores first wins. The NFL recently eliminated sudden death because of the huge advantage it gave to teams receiving the kickoff, but that’s not a problem in soccer where the team on the kickoff has no real significant advantage. Sure a team could score a wonky goal off a deflection or defensive error and the match would be over, but that same terrible goal could have provided the outcome in regular full time too (and often does) so it’s hardly a reason to avoid golden goal.

The upside of golden goal is that it’s no longer advantageous for teams to just sit back and play tough defense and wait for the 50–50 proposition of penalty kicks because they will never come. The goal — the win — must be earned.

The downside is fatigue. The match could end in 10 extra minutes, but it could also carry on for another 90 or even further if no goal comes. Tired players are not peak performers and, even worse, they’re prone to injury. Indeterminate golden goal is just too risky for the players’ health, and fans aren’t going to stick around for hours waiting either.

Golden goal, but for only the 30 added minutes

Ok, so this might work. Only 30 minutes of golden goal time could mitigate the problem of endless extra time and health risk.

But wait, the original problem is now back. If there’s only 30 minutes of golden goal play, the underdog is likely to dig in their heels and hold on for penalties once again. After all, any goal in extra time is already akin to a golden goal, not a guarantee of victory but a pretty big boost. Golden goal for only a defined period doesn’t help much.

Maybe some smaller changes could help.

Add 3 extra-time substitutions and an additional “half time” period

This would at least help with fatigue and player health risk. Players would have a 15-minute break between the 90th minute and the start of extra time, enough time for brief treatment and a short respite. And the additional substitutions would allow spent players to be subbed off and might afford managers a chance to make one or two aggressive moves to go for the win.

Of course the extra-time substitutions might be held by a savvy manager until the 119th minute before putting in his or her best penalty takers, so…

Anyone on the active roster can take a penalty kick

Teams often leave fatigued top players on the pitch far too long just because they need them out there for a potential penalty kick. Why not let any player on the active roster take a penalty? If a manager wants to sub off a star for fresher but inexperienced legs, great. If he or she wants to waste a roster spot to stash a penalty taker, go for it. Extra strategy is good for everyone.

But hey, speaking of extra strategy, how about something totally different?

My solution: a version of hockey’s wild 3-on-3 overtime

Look, the current soccer final set-up clearly isn’t working, so maybe it’s time to think outside the box. One of the best ways to force a game to open up would be to keep the same expansive pitch but fewer players on it, forcing a more open and fluid game.

Keep the added extra time and penalty kick set-up as is, but force each team to go down two players at the start of extra time. Now it’s 9v9, a bit more open and free. At halftime of extra time, two more on each team are sacrificed, leaving 7v7 on a wild open pitch for the final 15 minutes. The players would still be exhausted but the open space would provoke many to throw caution to the wind and push forward for a winner.

It would be wild and entertaining, the sort of can’t-miss action that would trend on Twitter and light up cell phones around the world. Hockey 3v3 overtime was odd, but it was crazy entertaining. And think of the strategy as managers are forced to decide whether to sacrifice defenders or attackers, without knowing what the other will do.

And sure, the result would be a game not completely resembling regular soccer, but it’s not like penalty kicks really give us that anyway. At the very least it would mean a better chance of the best players on the pitch using open space, pushing forward, looking for magical championship-winning moment.

After all, isn’t that what we are all longing for?

If you enjoyed this, please recommend it by clicking the ❤ so others can enjoy it too. Follow Brandon on Medium or @wheatonbrando for more sports, humor, pop culture, and life musings. Visit the rest of Brandon’s writing archives here.