Reuters Soccer Blog
World Soccer views and news
Calling time on extra-time
FIFA president Sepp Blatter is well known for coming up with some odd ideas and this latest seems as strange as any.
Blatter has admitted that there was too much negative football at the World Cup and believes that one way of improving things would be to scrap extra-time after drawn knockout matches.
Admittedly, this would seem to be a slight improvement on his suggestion last month, during an interview with the German magazine Focus, that drawn matches in the group stage should be settled by penalties. But at first glance there does not seem to be much else to recommend it.
The logic behind Blatter’s thinking is that when extra-time gets under way, teams often prefer to take their chance on penalties and shut up shop. So he reckons we might as well get straight on with penalties rather than waste another 30 minutes of everyone’s time.
from Left field:
The shoot-out where blazing over the bar is a good thing
Major rugby's first shoot-out was followed, almost inevitably, by a tidal wave of complaints about how unfair it all was.
Leicester secured a slot in the final of the Heineken Cup, Europe's premier club competition, after beating Cardiff Blues 7-6 "on penalties" on Sunday.
