“Winning on penalties”
Monday, 18 July 2011 12:01I found it interesting that the Wikipedia article “Penalty shoot-out (association football)” includes a section “Criticisms” which states that opinions on the results of a penalty shoot-out are divided:
As a way to decide a football match, shoot-outs have been seen variously as a thrilling climax or as an unsatisfactory cop-out.
It includes quotes for both sides.
As for me, I’m on the “unsatisfactory cop-out” side. I can see that games that go on for (essentially) forever, with extra time after extra time until one team is ahead, are not particularly satisfactory, but being declared winner after a shoot-out seems to me as if the game they won is not the team game “football” but rather a much more restricted, rather different game.
Eh. It’s in the rules and it’s official, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it. (On the other hand, don’t I often claim I’m not interested in football in the first place? Perhaps I shouldn’t have such strong feelings on this point, then.)