FIFA President Sepp Blatter wants to introduce new reforms
In order to promote positive and attacking football, FIFA President Sepp Blatter has organized a press conference discussing the possibility of reforms in the sport.
These problems came to forefront after this year’s FIFA World Cup in South Africa. It was claimed that most of the teams went into their matches with a negative mentality in order to draw their matches. Hence, many teams adopted a defensive approach to their games, as they went into their fixtures with two defensive midfielders and only one striker up front. Consequently, many games were boring, especially in the group stages of the World Cup. Fewer goals were also scored in the group stages compared to the two previous World Cups.
Even some of the big teams, including France and Italy, adopted the same approach, which resulted in their downfall as well. In the latter stages of the World Cup, the teams who played against some big attacking sides adopted a negative approach to their games. Ghana had adopted this approach, which helped them to reach the Quarter-Finals in South Africa. As a result, FIFA was under immense pressure to introduce some new rules in order to promote a positive and attacking approach by teams.
Therefore, Blatter has now suggested a new rule to scrap the extra time in games. This means that if a match is not decided within the allotted time, it would go directly to a penalty shootout, rather than playing half an hour of extra time spread over two halves. The logic behind this move is to encourage positive and attacking football. Many teams which adopt a negative approach actually try to defend for most parts of the match, while trying to look for a goal here and there. In this way, defensive teams make use of extra-time, as their opponents feel tired and fatigued. So, if the match goes directly to penalties, the obvious attempt by most of the teams would be to look for a goal within the allotted 90 minutes.
Another suggestion on the tables is to re-introduce the golden goal rule. This rule was previously introduced by FIFA in 1993, and it was used in many big tournaments since its inception. In an international tournament, it was used for the first time in Euro 1996. Also, France made use of this rule in Euro 2000, when they beat Italy by scoring a golden goal. However, this rule was scrapped in Euro 2004 because its critics thought that it promoted more defensive football.
According to this rule, extra time was allotted after a game remained undecided in the allotted 90 minutes. During the two halves of extra-time, any team who scored before their opponents won the match. Therefore, many teams who stopped the opposition from scoring in normal time adopted more negative tactics to pass the extra time. Thus, this rule was abandoned by FIFA after a lot of criticism.
FIFA also tried a silver goal rule for some time, but it did not gain much popularity. According to this rule, if a team scored in extra time, the opposition was given till the end of that particular half to equalize. However, this rule did not remain in promulgation for a long time, as it did not serve any purpose.
In a recent press conference, Blatter announced both these suggestions for discussion. However, the golden goal rule will not gain popularity because it has already been disregarded. The real problem with the golden goal rule is that it would only encourage some attacking approach in the extra time, as it would not alter the way teams play their game during normal time. On the other hand, if extra-time is scrapped altogether this would definitely give incentives to teams to play attacking football, at least for some part of the normal allotted time. Also, if teams do not change their tactics, fans would have to bear with only 90 minutes of boring football, rather than 30 more minutes of extra time.
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