Every time Sepp Blatter opens his mouth, the world cringes.
But even a broken clock is right twice a day and last week in his column for FIFA Weekly, the president of the game’s governing body questioned the continued use of one of football’s enduring laws: the away goals rule.
The law, Blatter believes, has come to provide an advantage to the team playing away from home, in the second leg: not the intention of the law.
The rule was introduced in the 1950s to counterbalance the disadvantages that the travelling team had to endure: days-long journeys, culture shock, unfamiliar surroundings.
Blatter argues that with far-more-level playing conditions, the home side advantage is not so significant as to warrant the “away goals”.
“Where the scores are tied, that [away] team has 30 minutes more than their opponent to score a valuable away goal,” he said. “After all, in the first leg there is no extra time.”
How right he is; the away goals rule is an anachronism today.
Many domestic competitions around the world have done away with, or modified, it. In the English league cup, away goals come into effect only after extra time of the second leg.
However, play-offs in the World Cup and European Championship qualifying still hold on to the law, as does the biggest competition of all, the Uefa Champions League.
What is the case against this law?
In the simplest sense, if two teams have scored an equal number of goals, they should both be required to score again to advance in knockout competitions. This is the surest way to force both teams to attack in order to avoid the supposedly dreaded penalty shootout.
The away-goals rule, however, ensures that only one team is obliged to score when the aggregate scores are tied, counter-intuitive to the way that football is meant to be played.
An infamous recent example came in the 2012 Champions League semi-final. Chelsea, leading 1-0 from the home leg, trailed Barcelona 2-1 in the second, at the Camp Nou, meaning the away-goals rule would see them through to the final.
What followed was one of the most defensive performances the competition has seen. As a desperate Barcelona poured forward, Chelsea resorted to little more than hoofing the ball up the field. Fernando Torres’s equaliser in the dying seconds was meaningless. Chelsea’s away goal before half time had negatively impacted how the second half would be played.
The away goals rule often shapes more matches in this way than it actually decides.
In the past 10 seasons, the Champions League has seen 15 knockout ties decided on away-goals rule.
Out of those, only four were achieved by a team winning the second leg. Five saw the second leg drawn; and six have seen the losing team advance, essentially defending a phantom lead.
On their way to the 2010 final, Bayern Munich knocked out Fiorentina (round of 16) and Manchester United (quarter-final) in identical circumstances: winning 2-1 at home before advancing from both ties despite 3-2 away losses.
In those 10 years there have been eight penalty shoot-outs, meaning that not a single goal has been scored in extra time over that period.
Blatter may be spot on when he says the away team holds the away-goal advantage in the extra half hour, but it seems very few, or none, make use of it.
Fatigue is a factor during extra time. Still, conceding an away goal (which would need to be answered with two) seems more of a disincentive for the home team than scoring one is an incentive for the visitors.
Which brings us to penalties, universally, and inaccurately, perceived as a lottery. While it is certainly a dramatic way to win and a heartbreaking one to lose a football match, it is puzzling why it continues to be seen as a more unfair way than the away-goals rule to settle the outcome.
Spot kicks at least still require a level of footballing skill, not to mention nerves. The away-goals rule is an arbitrary law that favours one team over another that has scored the same number of goals over the tie.
Goals should carry equal weight, no matter where they were scored. If the point of playing football is to score one more than your opponent, then it is the away-goals rule, not the penalty shoot-out, that is the real lottery.
akhaled@thenational.ae
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