Storyline: The away-goal rule seems to have outlived its usefulness. It’s holding back football instead of pushing it forward. Written by Spyros Kontolatis, Athens, Greece
Courtesy: itv.com
Last night Maccabi Tel Aviv celebrated its inaugural participation in the UEFA Champions League Group Stage with an away-goal victory over FC Basel. However nice the surprise might be, it filled me once again with doubts about whether the away-goal rule is beneficial to football.
First, let me explain the away-goal rule. It applies when two teams play each other twice–once in each team’s home ground. The rule states that, whenever a tie between the aggregate score happens, then the team that scored more goals away from home ground qualifies for the next stage.
For example, let’s suppose Team A plays Team B. Home team is traditionally written first:
Team A 2 – 1 Team B
Team B 1 – 0 Team A
which happens quite often. Then, the aggregate score is Team A 2 – 2 Team B. Here, Team B qualifies, because–as a tie breaker–the away-goal of the first match determines Team B to be the winner.
How was the away-goal initiated? It first applied in UEFA Cups Winners’ Cup in a game between Honved and Dukla Prague during the 1965-1966 season. By the 1970-1971 season it applied to all UEFA Champions Cup games (now UEFA Champions League). The need for its application happens when the previous tie breaker (a third game, that is) results in a draw more often than not.
Courtesy: uefa.com
However, nowadays it has decayed into a rule that teams seek to take advantage of. It is not unusual for a first knockout game to end in a boring 0-0 draw — or with the away team managing to score a goal and then forget about playing football so that it can snatch the coveted away goal victory. As a result the team that plays the first leg on home ground is much concerned about conceding a goal than it’s motivated to score one–thus ending up abandoning the home ground advantage.
As a result, first legs are often boring, a fact that has led many fans (including me) to suggest the rule’s abolishment. Rules in a sport, like football, are made to eliminate any advantage one team has over the other. That’s the reason football has so many surprises in its vast history. When the away-goal was initiated, home ground played an important role on the result and, thus, the rule’s goal was to eliminate that advantage. Nowadays, however, more and more teams manage to shock fans with outstanding appearances without the use of the away-goal rule.
It seems that this rule is holding football back instead of pushing it forward–a circumstance that I hope the associations will soon come to understand.
