#360debate: Are penalties the best way to decide a final?

Sport360 staff 08:44 30/05/2016
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  • Decisive: Cristiano Ronaldo settles the Champions League from 12 yards.

    Saturday evening’s Champions League final saw 120 minutes of intense action fail to separate Real and Atletico Madrid. In the end, only a penalty shootout could split the sides.

    As Atletico right-back Juanfran hit the post with just one round of spot-kicks remaining, the opportunity opened up for Portuguese superstar Cristiano Ronaldo to seal victory for his team. Unsurprisingly, he made no mistake.

    However, there are many who disagree with the format as a way of settling encounters.

    With that in mind, today’s #360debate is: Is a penalty shootout the best way to decide a major final?

    Matthew Jones, reporter, says YES

    Think tears streaming down John Terry’s face as the rain poured in Moscow or Roberto Baggio smashing high into the Pasadena sky to hand Brazil the 1994 World Cup.

    The majority of fans might come to the conclusion penalties are the cruellest form of deciding a game as since the introduction of the shootout in the 1960s, countless players, managers and fans have suffered collectively at the hands of defeat from 12 yards.

    Teams’ destinies have been altered by a single slip or an outstretched hand. But for all the criticism, the shootout remains the ultimate test of mental toughness and just represents another facet of the game players need to work on and improve at. It is a skill.

    On Saturday night in the San Siro, Atletico, like they have done all season, scrapped for every single ball and netted a deserved equaliser against Real Madrid.

    Defeat on them was harsh because they had proved to be the better side in the second half. The cruelty of their loss though was down to the fact they had been beaten for the second time in three seasons on European club football’s grandest stage by their rivals, not because of the manner of defeat.

    There is simply no suitable alternative: replays, golden and silver goal have been experimented with and scrapped, with good reason.

    Both silver and golden goals proved unpopular and inadequate as teams were paralysed by fear of failure so would refuse to attack, opting to wait it out for penalties. Five spot-kicks each is a proven, established and, dare we say, popular way to decide matters.

    Life’s cruel, and sport simply mirrors that; not everyone deserving of victory goes on to tell tales of success and glory. The idea of gradually removing players to provide more space on the pitch and create more chances is dangerous because it would just increase chances of players already running on empty suffering serious injury.

    For the sheer thrill, there remains no more dramatic nor fairer way to win or lose a trophy outside of regulation time.

    Andy West, La Liga correspondent, says NO

    Real Madrid may have won a trophy on Saturday, but they did not win a football match. All they won was an artificial, contrived game of chance which bore as much relation to the preceding action as Alicia Keys’ bizarre pre-match rendition of ‘Girl on Fire’.

    Shootouts are unfair, mindless charades which have nothing to do with football and should be dispensed with. The problem is that they are almost completely divorced from the sport for which they are employed to provide results.

    Football is a fast-moving team game, offering a fascinating combination of pre-planned tactics and spontaneous action, where the ultimate aim is to create space for a player to shoot on goal. It is most certainly not about a petrified player walking alone for 40 yards, placing a ball on a mark, running up, kicking it and hoping for the best.

    Defendants of shootouts claim there has to be some way of separating tied teams – true – and that nobody has yet come up a better solution than penalties. Rubbish.

    There is the suggestion – proposed by Louis van Gaal – for ‘first goal wins’ extra-time with the twist that both teams must remove one player every five minutes, thus providing more space and making it easier for chances to be created.

    Or you could be even more imaginative. How about, for example, giving four attacking players five minutes to score as many goals as possible against four defenders, who are not allowed outside their penalty area?

    Nearly anything would be better than the current situation, which is random, technically-limited, and a completely inappropriate way to determine which team is better than the other.

    Atletico Madrid lost perhaps the most important game in their history because their right-back, who never takes penalties, missed a penalty. How can that be right?

    To be blunt, anyone who thinks there’s no better solution than the lottery of shootouts needs to get their heads checked. It’s just not football.

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