World Cup chatter thread.

[Spider-Dan]

Well maybe regularly was the wrong word, but there have been a couple the last couple of years, so they aren't exactly unheard of. The point I was making was that even in the NFL, a tie during the regular season is possible and at one time it wasn't rare at all.

In the last decade of NFL regular season games (1,280 games), there have been 3 ties.
In the first week of the World Cup (23 games), there were 4 ties.

Only two times in the history of the NFL have there been two ties in the same season (1986 and 1997).  There have never been three ties in one NFL season.  They have always been rare.

You cannot compare ties in football to ties in soccer, at any remotely reasonable sense of scale.

[Fau Teixeira]

the scale is irrelevant .. the fact is tha tin both soccer and the nfl .. ties can and do happen in the regular season .. they do not happen in the playoffs .. the 1st phase of the world cup is like the regular season .. the 2nd is like the playoffs .. that's all

[Dave Gray]

^ Scale is not irrelevant. 

Ties are relatively meaningless in the NFL and have virtually zero impact on the sport.  They exist only to avoid the occasional 5 hour game where it starts to get dangerous.  The main point is that they exist only as a last resort and are so rare that their impact isn't felt.

In soccer, ties are an active driver in the standings and are part of the strategy of teams on a very regular basis. 

It's just not comparable.

Soccer is kind of like hockey, but we've seen the NHL try to attempt that by making an extra period with a guaranteed point for both teams.

[Spider-Dan]

Well put, Dave.

[CF DolFan]

In soccer ... the longer you play the less likely to score. PKs can be very ugly for this same fact. Soccer is a physical sport of endurance and tired legs do not respond as fresh ones do. The longer you go the worse you perform. It's been said soccer players run over 7 miles during a game. Add in another 30 minutes of OT and that number keeps going up and performance goes down.

I think it would be best for the fans to just do away with the substitution rule for OT and play until you have a winner, golden goal style. 

[Dave Gray]

I'm not trying to step in and make rule changes to a sport I don't watch and largely don't understand, but it seems that you could do a short overtime sudden death for 10 minutes or something.

[Phishfan]

I'm not trying to step in and make rule changes to a sport I don't watch and largely don't understand, but it seems that you could do a short overtime sudden death for 10 minutes or something.

They play two 15 minute overtime periods already.

[Dave Gray]

They play two 15 minute overtime periods already.

Not in the group round.  They play 90 minutes and then they go home.

[Phishfan]

Yea my mind was frazzled after work today. I was off point and was thinking that you thought they went straight to PKs.

[Pappy13]

I'm not trying to step in and make rule changes to a sport I don't watch and largely don't understand, but it seems that you could do a short overtime sudden death for 10 minutes or something.

They actually do a 30 minute extra period before the shootout of knockout games. There is no reason to do this prior to the knockout stage as ties are perfectly acceptable.

Look, neither of you are going to change your minds, you don't like ties and that's fine. But don't try to suggest that there's something inherently wrong with ties. Ties are a part of a large number of sports, not just soccer. You may not like it and you're certainly welcome to your opinion, but it's just an opinion. There are billions of fans of soccer that don't have a problem with them. Soccer has the largest fan base of any sport in the world, so there's not really any compelling reason to change it, it's not like it needs to appeal to more people.

[Pappy13]

Soccer is kind of like hockey, but we've seen the NHL try to attempt that by making an extra period with a guaranteed point for both teams.

All they did was change the scoring method of ties, they didn't try to eliminate them.

[Spider-Dan]

Look, neither of you are going to change your minds, you don't like ties and that's fine. But don't try to suggest that there's something inherently wrong with ties.

There quite obviously is something inherently wrong with ties, which is why they stop allowing them at the knockout round.

Everyone agrees that ties are an unacceptable way to resolve a World Cup champion.  I'm just saying that it would be nice if they stopped allowing them one stage earlier.

[Brian Fein]

All they did was change the scoring method of ties, they didn't try to eliminate them.

um, wha?

There are no ties in hockey anymore.   At all.  They didn't TRY to eliminate them, they ELIMINATED them.

The difference, for hockey, is that in the regular season, they play 5 minutes OT then shootout.  In playoffs, there is no shootout, they keep playing until someone scores.  That's what makes playoff hockey so exciting.

Of course, in soccer, they can't "keep playing" but PK's just seem so unfair.  I'd rather see the kick from farther out, or make the player dribble in and shoot so the goalie could come out to battle.  Just seems like a PK in soccer could be a goal every time cause the goalie has no chance to react and just sometimes gets lucky.

[Pappy13]

There quite obviously is something inherently wrong with ties, which is why they stop allowing them at the knockout round.

You cannot have a tie in a knockout round! The tie has to be broken somehow. Whether that be overtime, shootout or coin flip, you have to break the tie somehow. That simply is NOT true for the round robin matches. Are you really arguing that it's possible to have ties in a knockout round? It's not because ties are bad, it's because you CAN'T have a tie.

[Pappy13]

There are no ties in hockey anymore.   At all.

Then why does 1 team get a point? For what? A loss? No, for a tie. Least that's how I view it.