PKs Suck, But What's the Alternative?

Yesterday's All-England Champion's League Final between Manchester United and Chelsea had everything - huge crowd, semi-exotic locale, drama out the wazoo. Everything, that is, except a winner after two hours of play. With the teams deadlocked at 1-1, things proceeded to the dreaded penalty shootout to determine Europe's top club.

As shootouts go, it was pretty gripping stuff - Petr Cech stoning Ronaldo after his little stutter step, Chelsea captain John Terry slipping and missing on the decisive kick, another great save by Edwin van der Sar to win it for ManU. But, alas, it was still a shootout, prompting at least one English wag to proclaim that it's time to "scrap" the shootout.

Yeah, OK, fine - it's like deciding a baseball game with a home run derby. But what's the alternative?

In days of old, knock-out matches that were tied at the end of play were just replayed at a later date. Modern schedule congestion and television demands won't allow that now, however (aside from a very few instances in the FA Cup).

Robbo's suggestion is to start taking a player off every so many minutes, but that doesn't seem right, either. Fewer players on the pitch means more room to cover for already tired legs that have run for 90 or 120 minutes already, anyway.

We could return to either Golden Goal (sudden death) or Silver Goal (play the rest of the half) overtimes, but neither proved particularly popular. Of course, either might work considerably better once the promise of PKs coming in at a certain point was eliminated completely.

How about just let them keep playing, maybe with some provision for additional substitutions? After all, some of the great American sports moments have come in double or triple overtime playoff games in the NHL or NBA. The concern that the players would be too whipped for the next match doesn't hold water in a tournament final. If both teams knew somebody had to win on the pitch, maybe they'd be less likely to play not to lose and actually play to win.

Or, maybe things wills stay the same and we fans will just have something to keep bitching about. Isn't that what sports is really all about, anyway?