Going the Rounds: Shootouts should be booted during World Cup play

Published 1:30 am Friday, July 6, 2018

By Rick Anderson

For The Daily World

During his tenure as The Daily World’s sports editor, Rob Burns spent a fair amount of time defending soccer’s traditions from co-workers less astute about the sport (present company included).

Rob wouldn’t even denounce Major League Soccer’s aggregate-goal playoff format — once described by City Editor Dave Haerle as a best-of-two-game series.

Essentially, that is a home-and-home series decided by total goals, with the visiting team’s scoring serving as one of the potential tiebreakers. Considering how long the MLS season lasts, it does seem strange that the playoff schedule isn’t flexible enough to accommodate an if-necessary third contest.

As might be imagined, Rob also took a dim view of penalty-kick tiebreakers (aka shootouts). On that topic, after watching several World Cup contests within the past week, I agree with his viewpoint.

Penalty kicks are employed to decide World Cup elimination contests deadlocked after 90 minutes of regulation play and two 15-minute overtime periods. As is the case in all levels of soccer, each team receives five penalty kicks during the shootouts.

Admittedly dramatic, it is an artificial device to settle ties — not too dissimilar from staging home run derbies to decide extra-inning baseball games.

Even worse, the existence of the shootout encourages the weaker team (particularly one with a fine goalkeeper) to retreat into a defense-only posture during regulation time.

The frequent suggestions by World Cup television commentators that one team is “playing for penalties” can be as deflating to a viewer as watching a college or high school basketball team, in the era prior to the shot clock, go into a four-corner offense.

A prime recent example was the Spain-Russia World Cup Round of 16 match-up on July 1.

Both teams scored somewhat freakish goals during regulation. Otherwise, the favored Spaniards enjoyed perhaps 80 percent of the possession time and 90 percent of the scoring opportunities. Even some of the Russians admitted later that they were merely hoping to survive until the penalty-kick phase.

About midway through the first overtime, I found myself thinking that it would be a travesty if Spain had its title hopes dashed with a penalty-kick loss in such a match.

As it developed, Russia did win on PKs — and it was a travesty.

One reason why the World Cup is so passionately embraced outside the United States is that, like the Olympics, it is staged only once every four years. Waiting until 2022 to redeem themselves after this type of loss will be agonizing for the Spaniards.

Interestingly, the Seattle Sounders’ most memorable triumph was fashioned in a somewhat similar manner.

The Sounders didn’t manage a single shot on-goal against Toronto FC in the 2016 MLS Cup final. Thanks to brilliant goalkeeping by Stefan Frei, the Sounders won on penalty kicks to capture their only MLS title, although Toronto was able to avenge that defeat the following year.

Penalty-kick shootouts may be unavoidable at the high school and age-group level, particularly in playoff competition. One reason they persist at all levels of the sport is the shortage of viable alternatives.

One obvious parallel is found in hockey. The National Hockey League stages standard overtimes (with both sides playing short-handed) and penalty-shot shootouts during the regular season. In the Stanley Cup playoffs, however, overtimes are played indefinitely until a goal is scored.

But hockey is higher-scoring and has more liberal substitution rules than world-class soccer. It’s hard to imagine players, spectators or the media tolerating four-hour World Cup contests. If nothing else, the risk of injury would be too great.

In addition, there is no indication that international soccer administrators are dissatisfied with shootouts. It is too soon, however, to give up hope that some sort of creative tiebreaking formula that would reward aggressive play can be found.

After all, this is the same group that devised the best-of-two playoff format.