The ABBA penalty shootout system

[Conigliaro's Potential]

This...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/39798344

...seems so brilliant to me, I can't believe it's taken someone so long to suggest it:

As it stands, teams take turns in a shootout, with the choice of who goes first decided by a coin toss.

For example, team A goes first, then team B, then team A again.

The new system is called 'ABBA' and sees team A followed by team B - before team B goes again. Team A would then get two successive penalties, and so on until there is a winner.

A coin will still be tossed to decide who goes first.

What's not to like? (It's being tested in the current U17 European Championship, which starts next week.)

 

[tims4wins]

This...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/39798344

...seems so brilliant to me, I can't believe it's taken someone so long to suggest it:

What's not to like? (It's being tested in the current U17 European Championship, which starts next week.)

So if A doesn't score, then B scores twice, it is over?

 

[kenneycb]

Assuming you're talking about a best to three and not first to two, A could still score twice and have B miss its third attempt to tie it up. Nothing would change in the calculus of number of shots you take.

 

[tims4wins]

Assuming you're talking about a best to three and not first to two, A could still score twice and have B miss its third attempt to tie it up. Nothing would change in the calculus of number of shots you take.

I don't see anything in the article about how many guaranteed attempts each team gets

 

[kenneycb]

It doesn't matter though. It's the same as the current incarnation with x amount of rounds, just a different order.

 

[tims4wins]

It doesn't matter though. It's the same as the current incarnation with x amount of rounds, just a different order.

Ah ok, so 5 shots each. I was confused by this line:

The new system is called 'ABBA' and sees team A followed by team B - before team B goes again. Team A would then get two successive penalties, and so on until there is a winner.

 

[Titans Bastard]

Yes, the BBC Sport article was poorly worded. This ESPN article is clearer:

Team A will take the first spot kick, with Team B taking the first penalty for the second and third kicks, before Team A then takes the first kick for the fourth effort. The sequence then repeats itself for the final penalty and subsequent kicks that are required if the shootout goes into "sudden death."

http://www.espnfc.us/blog/uefa/258/post/3118000/uefa-set-to-experiment-with-new-abba-penalty-shootout-system

It's worth a shot.

 

[Conigliaro's Potential]

The key point is that the team going first in a penalty shootout under the current system tends to win about 60% of the time, primarily because so much more pressure tends to be felt by the team going second (which is always behind until someone in the other team misses). Mixing up the order from ABABABABAB to ABBAABBAAB gives each team a sense of that pressure - under the new proposal, sudden death would continue with BA, AB, BA, AB and so on instead of always AB, AB, AB, AB.

 

[Senator Donut]

I've been advocating this for years after reading a study about the issue several years ago. I never would have thought the stodgy folks at UEFA would experiment with it. Hopefully, this will be adopted across the sport.

http://www.lse.ac.uk/newsAndMedia/news/archives/2010/12/Penalties.aspx

 

[Tangled Up In Red]

No brainer. No reason against, unless sides start arguing about which goal side gets selected.

 

[67YAZ]

If the problem is with the order of penalty takers, why not have teams shoot simultaneously at opposite ends of the pitch? I'm only half joking. The split screen TV experience would be intense. In stadium, less so.