A Mod­est Pro­pos­al, by Wal­ter Murch

Moscow. It is a melan­choly object to those who walk through this great town when they see the vibrant sup­port­ers of the World Cup dri­ven to dis­trac­tion, yet again, by a tied game: Argenti­na 1 – 1 Ice­land, or Den­mark 0 – 0 France. All the effort of the play­ers, the coach­es, the enthu­si­asm of forty-five thou­sand in the sta­di­um, frus­trat­ed by a score of one-all or, far worse, 0 – 0.

In South Africa 2010 over a quar­ter – 17! – of the 64 games of the World Cup end­ed in tie scores (not count­ing extra time). In 2014, in Brazil, there were also 17 ties, eight of which were in the final six­teen games. More­over, this fits the long-term sta­tis­tics: just over 25 per cent of all 200,000 foot­ball match­es in Eng­land since 1888 have end­ed in draws.

In 2010, the final between Spain and the Nether­lands was score­less after nine­ty min­utes of reg­u­la­tion play, and the only goal was in the 26^th minute of extra time, after almost two hours of fruit­less skir­mish. The same was true in 2014 between Argenti­na and Ger­many: the only goal was scored by Ger­many in the 23^rd minute of extra time. And this was between the best team in the world at the time (Ger­many) and the team with the world’s great­est play­er (Argentina’s Messi).

What kind of sport is this, which so tor­ments its play­ers and supporters?

Despite football’s uni­ver­sal pop­u­lar­i­ty – more than one bil­lion view­ers watched the 2014 final between Ger­many and Argenti­na – you might sus­pect a per­verse co-depen­den­cy of frus­tra­tion, of tor­tured and tor­tur­er. The codes of prison appear nor­mal to the inmates only because they have been behind bars for so long.

The rules of foot­ball were laid down on the play­ing fields of England’s pub­lic schools in the ear­ly years of the 19^th cen­tu­ry, and they were express­ly designed to instil dis­ci­pline in the priv­i­leged sons of the pow­er­ful: the game taught boys who had every­thing to deal with the frus­tra­tion of noth­ing. The dia­bol­i­cal twist 200 years lat­er is that the bil­lions of foot­ball sup­port­ers most­ly resem­ble not the elite of Eton but the fans in the fave­las: young men who have noth­ing. Noth­ing, that is, but football.

So imag­ine the aver­age fan – let’s call him Jonatan Rápi­do – as his team seizes the ball for the twen­ti­eth time. The pass­ing is swift and mag­nif­i­cent – a few min­utes of inspi­ra­tional team­work that take one’s breath away. Now the ball is in the penal­ty area yards from the goal, the ten­sion on the field and in the stands and in the hearts of mil­lions of view­ers is unbear­able. Then there is a kick! But… NO GOAL!! This pat­tern is repeat­ed over and over in the course of the game’s nine­ty min­utes. And the chances are one in four that the game itself will end in a tie. If we tried to design a Brob­d­ing­na­gian machine for the man­u­fac­ture of sur­plus adren­a­line, it is hard to con­ceive a bet­ter one than this. Of course there are often riots after foot­ball match­es. How could there not be?

Can we deliv­er the game, the play­ers and its fans from this dread­ful dead­lock? Any change will of course be stren­u­ous­ly opposed – two cen­turies of tra­di­tion will die hard. Nonethe­less, I shall now humbly pro­pose my own thoughts, which – once under­stood – I hope will not be liable to the least objection.

Instead of one point, award five for each goal. And award one point every time the goalie stops the ball from going in the net. This lat­ter is already count­ed as a sta­tis­tic and is called, in offi­cial ter­mi­nol­o­gy, shots on goal or shots on tar­get (defined as any shot that either cross­es the goal line or is pre­vent­ed from doing so by the goal­keep­er) – the only dif­fer­ence is that it is not now part of the final score. Let us make it so.

This change would reward – mod­est­ly – the skill it takes to get pos­ses­sion of the ball, to move it down­field through the oppos­ing team’s defens­es, and to kick or head it accu­rate­ly enough to oblige the goal­keep­er to intervene.

In the 64 games of 2014’s World Cup, there were an aver­age of 7.5 shots on goal by each team in every game. Bel­gium man­aged 20 shots on goal (the high­est) against the USA, and Cos­ta Rica and Aus­tralia were held to 0 shots on goal against the Nether­lands and Spain. Using this sys­tem there would have been only four tied games in 2014: Greece vs Ivory Coast, Cos­ta Rica vs Eng­land, Hon­duras vs Ecuador and Colom­bia vs Ivory Coast. There would have been two games where the vic­to­ry was reversed: Greece 17 – 10 over Cos­ta Rica instead of a 2 – 1 vic­to­ry for Cos­ta Rica; and Bosnia Herze­gov­ina 15 – 13 over Argenti­na instead of a 2 – 1 vic­to­ry for Argentina.

Using this sys­tem, let’s look at some sam­ple scores from the 2018 World Cup so far: USA vs. Por­tu­gal 18 to 17 instead of 2 – 2 draw; Bel­gium vs Rus­sia 15 – 6 instead of 1 – 0 for Bel­gium; Por­tu­gal vs Iran 12 – 8 instead of 1 – 1; Eng­land vs Pana­ma 31 – 6 instead of 6 – 1 for Eng­land; Spain vs Moroc­co 12 – 12 instead of 2 – 2 (an unusu­al tie score in both sys­tems); Uruguay vs Rus­sia 19 – 1 instead of a 3 – 0 win for Uruguay. Bel­gium would have beat­en Eng­land 8 – 1 instead of 1 – 0.

Aside from the num­bers being high­er, the scores would have changed on aver­age 12 times each match, or once every sev­en and a half min­utes, com­pared to every 39 min­utes using the tra­di­tion­al sys­tem. This five-fold increase in tem­po would be more ener­gis­ing and reward­ing for both play­ers and fans.

And sig­nif­i­cant­ly, in 2014 there would have been only four tied games, rather than 17. None of the games would have been 0 – 0, instead of 11. Very sel­dom would a game have to go into extra time, and almost nev­er would there be recourse to the hat­ed prac­tice of a tie-break­ing kickoff.

Of course, if the teams had known that shots on goals were count­ed, their per­for­mance would have changed, and the results might have turned out dif­fer­ent­ly. With­out a doubt, strat­e­gy would evolve under these new rules, quite pos­si­bly for the bet­ter, mak­ing the games even more swift, strate­gic and sat­is­fy­ing. For exam­ple, the stal­e­ness of play not­ed in the final between Spain and the Nether­lands in 2010 would have most like­ly been enlivened by a close 3 – 2 score at half­time. Offence would be spurred on to greater effort, and con­se­quent­ly defence as well.

The advan­tages of my mod­est pro­pos­al are many and evi­dent, the draw­backs none; and oth­er than tradition’s reluc­tance to change, there seem to be no rea­sons against it. I pro­fess, in the sin­cer­i­ty of my heart, that I have not the least per­son­al inter­est in endeav­our­ing to pro­mote this nec­es­sary work, hav­ing no oth­er motive than the pub­lic good, and by exten­sion the relief of the gen­er­al lev­el of ner­vous ten­sion in the world.