Penalties

I hate penalties. I hate how arbitrarily a winner is chosen. I hate the way penalties discard everything that came in the previous one-hundred and twenty minutes. I hate how they place the burden of winning or losing on one player. Soccer's not about the individual. Teams rise or fall collectively. They train together, they play together, they should win and lose together. But penalties don't work that way. Penalties isolate a player. Suddenly he finds himself alone. There's nothing but the ball, the goal, and, unfortunately, the other team's goalkeeper. If you miss, your team is out. The pressure is mounting. Your teammates have all made their spot-kick and now you need to make yours. If you don't, your team is out and it's your fault. Penalties just aren't in the spirit of the game.

So, what do we do about it? Well, nothing mostly. We can complain about it and suggest things FIFA should do, but almost certainly won't. Stephen Colbert (I know, I know) once said that, and I'm paraphrasing, that deciding the World Cup Final on penalties is like deciding the NBA Championship on a game of 'Horse' Despite the fact that the World Cup Final is so beyond the NBA Championship in both scope and importance as to be incomparable, it remains the best case against penalties that I've heard. People may argue that penalties are exciting or that they've become part of the fabric of the game and either point has valid arguments to be made for it. However, I refuse to accept that entire tournaments, international tournaments, events that billions of people watch, should be decided by ten shots from twelve yards away because we've gotten tired of seeing no one score. The very possibility of penalties hurts the game. It allows less talented teams to put ten men behind the ball in an attempt to stifle a superior opponent's offense and take the game to penalties. Once they've done that, their chances are advancing are just as good as their opponent's, despite being played off the park for two hours. Take, for example, the case of Italy against Spain in the quarterfinals of Euro 2008. It can be universally agreed upon that Spain, based on the run of play, deserved to win that game. Italy, however, did what they do the best and employed their patented style of play 'Catenaccio'. For those of you who don't know, catenaccio means 'door-bolt' in Italian and the system calls for highly organized defense with goals scored on counter-attacks. The definition of boring soccer. Yet, Italy could have been said to have an advantage going into the shoot-out. The Azzuri boasted Gianluigi Buffon in goal, widely considered to be the best in the world. Just two games before, Buffon had made an unbelievable penalty save against Romania's Adrian Mutu, keeping Italy's hopes of advancing alive. Spain's eventual victory on penalties doesn't reflect the fact that they could have just as easily been sent home. A cruel reward for actually playing an attacking style based on possession and skill.

But what can we do to prevent teams from employing strategies like catenaccio or the anti-soccer played by Greece in 2004? The best solution that I can think of would be to keep playing. Wait, what? That's your solution? Just...keep on keepin' on? Well, no. There are a couple changes I would make. They are somewhat radical changes, but I believe they're for the benefit of the game. The first thing I would do would be to grant team's another substitution at the end of regulation. Teams would play the first overtime period just as they do right now. The coach can use whatever substitutions still available to him at the end of the game in addition to the added substitution. If, at the end of the first overtime period, the teams are still tied then both teams will remove a player. Now the game's ten versus ten. The coaches are granted another substitute to use at their discretion. The process should continue for as long as is necessary. At the end of each overtime where the game remains tied, add one substitution and take one player off the field. The addition of extra substitutions will keep the players fresh while the removal of players will open up the game and allow teams playing with guile and flair more opportunities at goal and thus more opportunities to win on their own merit. I rather prefer teams advancing on merit rather than the arbitrary and all-too-cruel solution we currently employ.