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| Acmlm's Board - I3 Archive - World Affairs/Debate - Soccer |
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Silvershield   580                    Since: 11-19-05 From: Emerson, New Jersey Last post: 6308 days Last view: 6295 days |
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| This thread could just as easily be in the sports and entertainment forum, but I don't see it getting the attention I hope for if it's down there. In any case, it will ideally turn into a debate (or at least a discussion) of some sort, and so I justify my decision to place it here.
It's been pointed out frequently on sports television, especially since Italy's World Cup win over France, that to decide a game by penalty kicks is of questionable, even dubious, utility. Some have gone so far as to make the analogy that it would never be acceptable to decide the World Series with a home run derby, nor could a game of basketball ever end with a slam dunk competition or a round of HORSE, and it it likewise ludicrous to reconcile a tied soccer game with the minigame of sorts that is a penalty shootout. In short, is it right for the World Cup final, or for any soccer game of any consequence, to conclude with a penalty shootout? Does that really prove who the superior team is? I'll provide my opinion as soon as someone else has said their piece, just so I don't feel like I'm talking to myself. |
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witeasprinwow  Since: 12-29-05 Last post: 6404 days Last view: 6404 days |
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| Before I say anything, I'd sorta like to defend this being in World Affairs/Debate. This isn't so much talking about the entertainment value of sports as it is talking about what the rules of a game should be, which could be applied to all sorts of games and contests. Sports, video games, board games, puzzles...
Now to the point... Soccer is what I would classify as a "Head to Head" game, in that matchups matter. For example, in swimming it doesn't matter what your opponent does, you just go as fast as you can. In track, it doesn't matter how tall/lanky your opponent is, you just focus on getting the most speed out of your section of the track. These kinds of activities are what I call "Parallel Competition." You are facing the course, which puts emphasis on learning one optimal technique and performing it as well as you can. Sports like Soccer, including Basketball, Football, and Baseball have matchup issues, which creates strategy as opposed to just technique. Strategy is obviously not limited to sports; quasi-sports like Nascar or Counter-Strike and non-sports like Chess have strategy as well. The one unifying factor is that they are all "Head to Head," they require matchups to take place. If you are playing Chess against an opponent you know likes to get his knights out early, you are going to be extra cautious of his knights and use strategies to nullify them. Soccer is like this. That is why I think it is unfair to have penalty kicks decide a game. The bulk of the game is a whole defense versus and offense. The defense isn't just about how good your goalkeeper is, but how good the players around him are. If he has good defenders around him, there will not be as many shots the goalkeeper must block, and as such a defense can still be great even without the best of goalkeepers. Additionally, it makes it harder for the offense. Penalty kicks take the defenders out of the game, thus making the matchup offense vs goalkeeper; If a team so happens to have a bad goalkeeper, they are basically screwed. Of course, in light of most other options, I think a penalty kick-off might be the least bad option. I think this is an inherent problem with defense-centric sports, as well. You never see more than, say, 20 minutes of overtime in a basketball game, and that is because it is very easy to score in basketball Say scoring 60% of your posessions is decent in basketball, maybe even a low if we're talking NBA, while soccer is probably in the single digit percentiles. There are just going to be more ties that way. WOW. This was MUCH longer than I wanted... |
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Arwon Bazu Since: 11-18-05 From: Randwick, Sydney, NSW, Australia Last post: 6297 days Last view: 6296 days |
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| In Australian Rules Football, on the extremely rare occasion that a grand final ends in a tie, they replay the game a week later. This works because ties are rare in such a high-scoring sport as the AFL.
I could see the argument for replaying a World Cup final (or other big final) in the event of a tie, but the logistics might be too difficult. Plus you might get 5 ties before you get a result. The other alternative is endless extra time and that's gotta be unsafe for the players when coupled with the limited substitutions in socball. The other problem is that in such a low-scoring sport it would be too easy for teams to play for the draw and thus the replay, especially if there's been injuries or cards that change the likely balance of a replay game. Penalty kicks are a bit of a crapshoot, but they still involve a serious element of skill as well as luck... and they test the guts and mental toughness of the teams like nothing else. We all saw the way England wilted under the pressure of that penalty shootout with Portugal... it can't be argued that this was pure luck, this takes away from the toughness the Portuguese showed versus the way England utterly messed up. In the end, you have to split two teams somehow, and penalty kicks after extra time are a gut-wrenching but workable way to do it. Sport is a mixture of luck, skill and circumstance anyway... sport is cruel, someone has to lose eventually. Moreover, all sports are utterly arbitrary in their rules and customs... why do some sports allow draws and others do not? Why do some sports have offisde rules of various kinds, and others don't? Why does basketball have the seemingly absurd foul rules it does? Why does soccer have such a low tolerance for bodily contact? Why is a scrum different in rugby leage than rugby union? Why is Ice Hockey divided into three periods? Why do any sports have the precise set of rules they do? Because they do. There's no objective external logic or rationality to sport.... they're self-contained systems that can only be understood in terms of themselves. (edited by Arwon on 07-11-06 01:28 AM) |
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beneficii Broom Hatter Since: 11-18-05 Last post: 6299 days Last view: 6295 days |
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Since football (not soccer!) is a world sport that many in the world care about, it can be fit under "World Affairs/Debate" as it is a debate about something worldwide it fits at least 2/3 of that description.  The thread stays. |
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witeasprinwow Since: 12-29-05 Last post: 6404 days Last view: 6404 days |
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Originally posted by Arwon First off, NBA basketball rules are partially due to the culture of the NBA. Big stars scoring lots of points sells tickets and gets TV ratings up, and because of that it's more beneficial to tailor the rules to accomidate those kind of high-scoring people. College basketball is somewhat different. There is SOME reasoning to the rules of sports, though. About the hockey having three periods thing... That's just part of the basic groundwork of the game. A lot of the rules are made in response to the nuances of the game, however, to try and create more balance around the sport. |
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Arwon Bazu Since: 11-18-05 From: Randwick, Sydney, NSW, Australia Last post: 6297 days Last view: 6296 days |
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| Exactly. And penalty shootouts fit the particular rhythms and nuances of socball. | |||
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Silvershield 580 Since: 11-19-05 From: Emerson, New Jersey Last post: 6308 days Last view: 6295 days |
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| Let me try to put my own opinion into words.
Ultimately, the purpose of any sort of tournament, or any single game for that matter, is to discern which participating team is superior to those against which it is competing. In soccer, I first found myself seeking to spell out exactly what it means for a team to be "superior." That is, I put together an idea of what capabilities and attributes a good soccer team possesses. Among them are such fields as: - good communication between players. - skillful coaching and management. - technical proficiency, insomuch as mastery of fundamental skills (passing, positioning) and, if not mastery, at least awareness of other more advanced skills (remaining onside, making accurate crosses). - mastery of fatigue. As soccer is a game in which players can expect to be on the field for 90 minutes or more, it is vital that preparing for fatigue is addressed both by individual players and as a team. - maintaining individually skillful players in each position (including forwards, goalkeepers, etc). - having a roster with such depth as to assure substitutions that do not disrupt or even cripple the players already on the field. - individual "stars" - that is to say, one or more single players who are standouts and can, to some degree, carry the rest of the team. Now, that is by no means a comprehensive list, but I think it is fairly thorough and essentially accurate. Of course, as a game of soccer would seek to discern whichever of the two teams has those attributes, or which displays each more strongly, an ultimate decision-making event - in this case, a penalty shootout to resolve a tied game - should reflect those fields. Without addressing each of my stated points individually, I can say that one gets the sense that all of those contributing factors involve teamwork as opposed to invidual prowess. Even the idea of a single superstar carrying the team as a whole, or a skillful player residing in each position, includes the idea that such players have a larger supporting cast to facilitate their endeavors: what good is a star forward when the midfield can't get the ball to him? I'll stop my diatribe and just try to sum up what I'm thinking, because I feel myself veering off track a bit. Ultimately, as a goalkeeper for a number of years - hardly professionally, of course, but nonetheless - I can sympathize with the idea of being stuck in a net and having guys line up to take potshots from twelve yards out. Even with the most practiced goalie, one who is adept at reading the feet of a person who's lining up for a shot, it amounts to little more than a guessing game. A flip of the coin, if you will. I can guess right and make the save, or guess wrong and miss it. Or, I can get lucky and he can choke and just miss the net altogether. In a game of such magnitude as a World Cup final, you don't want the "wrong" team to win. Surely any number of variables can lead to that result, but none would be as random or as arbitrary as a shootout. An unlucky red card can tilt the odds against the better team, but is that disadvantaged team really superior if they cannot display the integral skill of avoiding or managing fouls and cards? Conversely, the smallest bit of luck - a French player hitting the crossbar instead of aiming only inches lower - can decide the victor. That one miskick, that one missed PK, decided everything. If it were my job to propose a solution, the idea of penalty kicks would be entirely erased from the game (except to award to players who have been fouled in the box during the course of normal play). Your team has 22 players, let them all play! As it stands, maybe fourteen or fifteen of a World Cup roster will ever see the field, and the remainder seem to be token names that might as well be anyone. When overtime has finished, instead of lining up for penalty kicks, play should continue as normal. Except, substitutions should be allowed at will. Those seven or eight guys who are sitting on the side should get to see some playing time. After all, isn't it better for a team to have 22 solid players than ten or eleven really good ones? As it stands, your eleven starters and the three subs are supposed to represent your entire country's soccer identity. I wrote this post over the course of an hour, in between breaks to watch a bit of TV, so it probably sounds really disjointed. But whatever. |
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Arwon Bazu Since: 11-18-05 From: Randwick, Sydney, NSW, Australia Last post: 6297 days Last view: 6296 days |
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| That's funny, I thought the deciding factor was 'scoring more goals'.
Ho hum. |
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Sweet Kassy Molassy Out of ice cream and PB. Would KILL for a milkshake right now.  Since: 06-17-06 From: LoozeeAnna Last post: 6296 days Last view: 6295 days |
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| Penalty kicks are part of the game. There have to be certain penalties for certain offenses. You can't take them out of the game just to avoid having them decide a game here and there. Same thing with penalty shots in hockey.
Was the game decided by penalty kicks or a shootout? because those are two completely different things. Still, I can see reasons for a shootout being necessary when a draw isn't an option. Games can't go on forever. There has to be some sort of ultimate time limit. Shootoffs are part of the game too, so it's just useless bickering to whine about them deciding a game. Only the fans of the losing team have a problem with it  (edited by Kasdarack on 07-11-06 07:27 PM) |
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Silvershield 580 Since: 11-19-05 From: Emerson, New Jersey Last post: 6308 days Last view: 6295 days |
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Originally posted by ArwonAnd does a penalty shootout really simulate the real-game situation of scoring a goal, or is it as close a simulation to that as a home run derby is to hitting a real-game home run? Hitting a baseball 500 feet is easier when the ball's being lobbed at you by a batting practice pitcher, just like scoring a goal is easier when you have a spot kick at twelve yards without a defender in sight. Originally posted by KasdarackI'm all for penalty kicks during the duration of a game itself. If you'd read a single line of my (admittedly enormous) post, you'd have gotten that pretty clearly. The game was decided by a penalty shootout; one Frenchman missed his shot, but only by inches, while each of the Italians who shot were successful, and that decided the entire game. A little bit offensive, really, watching the entire hard-fought game simplified into ten minutes of potshots. And I resent being called a "whiner" for proposing a debate about something. I think I'm pretty justified, to be honest. Hell, I was rooting for the Italians, so it's not like my team lost. |
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Sweet Kassy Molassy Out of ice cream and PB. Would KILL for a milkshake right now. Since: 06-17-06 From: LoozeeAnna Last post: 6296 days Last view: 6295 days |
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| I didn't mean to imply that you were a whiner. I apologize that that's how I came across. I just get upset when people bicker about situations in games because most of them knew the rules and how the game worked before deciding to watch.
I did read part of your post... and then scrolled through the thread and my OMGhuge replynow instinct kicked it. But... a shootout requires skill too. It's not as much of a team effort per shot, but it is a team effort. Your players are tested in a critical moment. One on one versus the goalie. Each player who gets a kick contributes to the success/fail ratio of the team. The teams get to that point by playing a good, evenly matched game so it comes down to the wire. I fail to see how a shootout is not representative of the skills of the players as individuals and the strength of a team. (edited by Kasdarack on 07-11-06 09:24 PM) |
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Silvershield 580 Since: 11-19-05 From: Emerson, New Jersey Last post: 6308 days Last view: 6295 days |
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Originally posted by KasdarackOk, my mistake  .
Originally posted by KasdarackIf a shootout weren't so random, I'd think it were a wonderful way to end a game that might otherwise continue indefinitely. Like I mentioned before, I never played pro - not hardly - but even an amateur goalie can attest that a penalty kick is nothing more than a roll of a die. (A die that is fixed so that the shooter wins more often than not, but that's irrelevant.) You'll be hard pressed, as a goalie, to really read a shooter, and it's almost always an issue of just guessing. As I see it, that's not a good way to ultimately decide an enormously high-stakes game. |
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Sweet Kassy Molassy Out of ice cream and PB. Would KILL for a milkshake right now. Since: 06-17-06 From: LoozeeAnna Last post: 6296 days Last view: 6295 days |
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| I suppose so...
I'm a hockey fan, and the shooter almost never scores in a shootout, so my feelings there are exactly the opposite of what you just said. |
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Silvershield 580 Since: 11-19-05 From: Emerson, New Jersey Last post: 6308 days Last view: 6295 days |
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Originally posted by KasdarackBut, then again, a professional hockey goalie will have a .9 save rate or higher, while a soccer goalie will have nothing near that. A soccer game and hockey game that have comparable scores will often see vastly different save counts - the soccer keepers might see between three and five saves each, while the hockey keepers will each have 30+. They're just different games, and the two positions cannot be directly compared. |
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Sweet Kassy Molassy Out of ice cream and PB. Would KILL for a milkshake right now. Since: 06-17-06 From: LoozeeAnna Last post: 6296 days Last view: 6295 days |
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| I wasn't comparing them, I was just pointing out why I was inclined to think the other way.
I can see your point and won't argue with it. I just can't think of how else they could decide a draw game. |
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Arwon Bazu Since: 11-18-05 From: Randwick, Sydney, NSW, Australia Last post: 6297 days Last view: 6296 days |
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| There's a large element of sport that is entirely random, anyway.
"one Frenchman missed his shot, but only by inches, while each of the Italians who shot were successful, and that decided the entire game" It's a game of randomness and inches throughout, anyway. A player is offside by a bare margin. A cross drops just wide of a striker's head. A goalie manages to get fingertips to a ball and knock it wide. Penalty shootouts are penalty kicks, a part of the game. Shootouts are still a test of the fundamental skills of the game, albeit in a controlled setting. After 120 minutes fail to separate two teams, it's entirely reasonable to say enough is enough, and reduce it to such a controlled situation resting on inches. |
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witeasprinwow Since: 12-29-05 Last post: 6404 days Last view: 6404 days |
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| I agree that there's always going to be some randomness, but I think there are limits to how far you can take that as a justification. We are looking for the MOST fair set of rules.
Basically, to summarize my last post, it's a problem with defense-centric sports like soccer. All sports where defense is favored and points are limited (Soccer / Hockey / Lacrosse / Others, I'm sure) will end up in a lot of ties when played at a high level of skill, simply because the rules of the game are well tilted towards the defensive end of the ball. In basketball (A rather offense-centric sport), when both teams are scoring upwards of 100 points a game and possibly beyond, there is little chance for a tie, because it is relatively probable to score different numbers of points even if the teams are pretty well matched. The chances both teams score EXACTLY 105 points is pretty bad. In a game like soccer, where you expect only 1 or 2 points for your team, you are much more likely to tie. What they could do is something like how overtime works in college football... Give each team the ball near the goal (but not a penalty kick, have other players on the field) and give them a certain amount of time. If they miss or the other team gets possession, the other team gets the ball and gets to try it. The first team to score without being scored on in response wins. Just an idea. EDIT: Wow, I was tired when I wrote this. I fixed all the nonsensical statements and sentance fragments and stuff. (edited by witeasprinwow on 07-12-06 05:39 PM) |
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Sweet Kassy Molassy Out of ice cream and PB. Would KILL for a milkshake right now. Since: 06-17-06 From: LoozeeAnna Last post: 6296 days Last view: 6295 days |
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| That idea has merit, but could still take three forevers. And soccer/futbol is so big and so devoutly followed that I doubt the rules could be changed at this point. | |||
Cynthia Uh-huh. Since: 11-17-05 From: LaSalle, Quebec, Canada Last post: 6295 days Last view: 6295 days |
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| Penalty kicks are a lottery but there's really no other way to decide the game. Because of the nature of soccer, you can't just play endless extra time until there's a winner, and it's time-consuming to replay the game if it ends tied.
I thought that the Golden Goal rule + penalties was probably the most logical way to solve the problem with the current system, but it's still not perfect. |
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Salmon Red Cheep-cheep Since: 11-18-05 From: Norway Last post: 6311 days Last view: 6300 days |
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| As a long-playing goal keeper (ever since I was a little child I've been playing goal keeper, I still do today, in an amateure-league, of course) I can say that there is nothing quite as wonderful as having a penalty kick taken against you, and I cannot see where Silvershield is coming from.
Penalty Kicks are a lot about mentality, and as the goal keeper, you can not be anything but thrilled to have a penalty kick taken against you. It's a situation in which you cannot lose, only win. If they score, no one's gonna blame ya', it was a penalty kick. If you save, you're the grand, big hero. Also, knowing that the situation is the complete opposite for the penalty taker, you have the upper hand mentally. Anyway, I don't think penalty kicks are as random as some would have you believe. Did you know that in the history of the World Cup, Germany has only missed one single time in a penalty kick shootout (Stielike against France in 1982, a shootout they still won). That's 17 times scored out of 18 attempts. Argentina had never lost a penalty kick shootout before meeting Germany (a shootout where one of the teams would have to get their first loss). On the other end of the scale, you got Italy, who won their first World Cup shootout against France in some match a couple of days ago, and England, notoriously known for messing up shootouts. Is it random, or is there a certain skill included, when you see the same teams winning and the same teams losing over and over? |
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