IFAB decides on tennis system test to improve fair balance of penalty shootouts
LONDON: Football’s lawmaking International Board is to study whether a tennis-style format could improve the fairness of penalty shootouts writes KEIR RADNEDGE.
At the moment the two captains decide on the toss of a referee’s coin who should take the first of alternate kicks. However research has shown that the team taking the first kick wins the shootout 60pc of the time.
The annual meeting of IFAB at Wembley decided to review an alternative system which replicates the switch of serve between tennis players in a tiebreak. Hence Team A would take the first penalty, Team B the second and third, Team A the fourth and fifth etc until each team had taken five.
Stewart Regan, the Scottish FA chief executive, said: “The stats at the moment say 60 percent of penalty shootouts are won by the team that takes the first kick.
“We believe that the ABBA approach could remove that statistical bias and it’s something we would look to trial.”
IFAB, made up of the four British FAs and world governing body FIFA, has also scrapped the law which saw an automatic yellow card for a player giving away a penalty, provided a genuine attempt was made to play the ball.
All the IFAB decisions: http://keirradnedge.com/2017/
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