Englishman bids to end shoot-outs

AN AMBITIOUS attempt has been launched from the home of penalty heartbreak – England – to replace decisive shoot-outs with a process dubbed 'The Advantage', which has an abbreviated spot-kick contest prior to extra-time.

Englishman Henry Birtles, negotiator of broadcast rights for a TV production company, submitted his proposal to Fifa early in the new year and it is believed that world football's governing body is warming to the idea.

The process would work thus. A cup tie is tied at the end of 90 minutes, so each team takes three penalties apiece – sudden death is also an option – and the winner of that contest would take 'The Advantage' into extra-time. If no goals are scored in the additional 30 minutes, then the team with 'The Advantage' goes through.

It would seem a preposterous idea, stripping away the drama and pressure of a decisive penalty shoot-out with a token gesture devoid of meaning for fully half an hour. And that 30 minutes would in all likelihood see the team with 'The Advantage' park themselves on the edge of their own area to defend like dervishes. Hardly a recipe to enliven extra-time – when was the last time you heard anybody say 'I really enjoyed extra time, thoroughly entertaining'?

Yet it seems the corridors of power are quite receptive to the proposal. Sepp Blatter, the Fifa president, was deeply dissatisfied with the fact that the last World Cup final was decided on penalties. "When it comes to World Cup finals it is passion and when it goes to extra time it is drama, but when it comes to penalty kicks it is tragedy," he said. "Football is a team sport and penalties in not about a team, it is about the individual."

However, penalties have produced some of the most memorable episodes of footballing theatre in recent years. Who can forget Chris Waddle's wild slash over the bar against West Germany that sealed England's World Cup fate in 1990? Or Gareth Southgate's feebleness compared to Andreas Moller's triumphant blast when the two sides met again in the Euro 96 semi-finals? Or David Beckham's re-enactment of Waddle's ineptitude against Portugal in Euro 2004?

The list goes on. Some truly great players have missed penalties – Roberto Baggio and Franco Baresi when Italy lost the World Cup final to Brazil in 1994, Marco Van Basten when Denmark knocked the Netherlands out in Euro 92. It does not make them tragic figures, merely mortal, someone that fans can identify with.

Birtles claims 'The Advantage' is "clearly a fairer way of deciding the outcome of a match. It will increase the game as a spectacle." Perhaps, but only because it would be fascinating to watch players who have botched their penalties attempt to redeem themselves or, alternatively, collapse in a distraught mess in extra time. That does not erase the sense of cruelty to the individual that Blatter insists upon.

Birtles continues that 'The Advantage' "will mean the re-birth of extra-time because this phase of play has largely become seen as non-competitive. Now extra time will become the highlight." Similar claims were made of golden and then silver goals, but they have since fallen by the wayside, never fully recovering from the fatal blow dealt by Oliver Bierhoff's weak winner for Germany in the final of Euro 96 against the Czech Republic.

It will take more than a rejig of a game's order to make extra time exciting again.