In another of my moments of comparing World Cup football to other sports, I really feel that Fifa need to reintroduce the golden goal. That's sudden death to the un-knowing. This comes after watching the Toronto Blue Jays (that's baseball to the eqaully un-knowing football fans) win their one-off, win or bust, playoff game in extra innings (extra time, kind of).
One of the most famous World Cup golden goals was South Korea's winner against Italy in 2002. Critics said that it made teams play defensively because nobody wanted to lose, but the tension generated by the prospect of suddenly winning or losing when a goal was scored was excitement in itself. I was a baseball sceptic up until last year. But at times, especially in the playoffs the excitement is unparallelled. Fifa could well do with adding something to stop losing first time football watchers after they sit through Costa Rica and Greece play a terribly dull, "we don't want to lose" 0-0 draw at the World Cup.
When Fifa eliminated the golden goal in 2004 the headline on Fifa's website was: "Footballing world cheers end of golden goal". The footballing world were coaches and Italian newspapers who were still bitter about the loss in Korea. As much as I used to find it hard to agree with North American sports leagues, I think they have it right when they are obsessed with every game having a winner, a draw rarely exists....except in Major League Soccer.
No comments:
Post a Comment