Whatever happened to the Golden Goal? | OneFootball

It suddenly occurred to me, whatever happened to the Golden Goal?

I watched all four matches at the weekend, much to the annoyance of my wife.

A theme became very clear, well at least until we came to the final welcome frenzy of the Holland v Turkey match.

All of the first three 2024 European Championships quarter-finals went to extra-time, two of the three going to penalties and only Mikel Merino’s superb header in the 119th minute prevented it from becoming three out of three needing spot-kicks.

Indeed, no goals at all were scored in extra time in the quarter-finals, apart from that eventual one-minute-to-go Spain winner over Germany.

Most woeful of all of course was England, where Gareth Southgate seemed to be playing for penalties as soon as the 80th minute equaliser went in, never mind during the actual extra-time, where next to no attacking was allowed by the Three Lions.

With the likes of England and France so blatantly not going for the winner at this quarter-final stage, I found myself researching Golden Goal and why and when it exactly ended in the likes of the World Cup and Euros, as I honestly have no recollection of that happening, or more importantly, why they stopped using this in extra-time.

As so often happens when you start looking for something online, you end up finding out all kinds of things.

The first time the Golden Goal (sudden-death rule as it was known then) was used in English football, happened over 150 years ago.

The English Youdan Cup of 1867 (four years before the FA Cup became a thing), featured a sudden-death (Golden Goal) rule. If scores were level after 90 minutes, then an hour of extra time was played unless either team scored during that time, then the match ended thanks to the Golden Goal of its time. Norfolk FC and Broomhall FC played finished goalless on 23 February 1867, only for then when an hour of extra-time kicked off, Norfolk more or less ran straight up the other end and scored a (Golden) goal after only two minutes of that extra-time to win the match.

Moving forward almost 130 years and looking for a solution to teams playing so negatively in extra time and not trying to score, simply hanging on for penalties, FIFA introduced the Golden Goal rule in 1993. The intention of incentivising teams to try and score a winning Golden Goal during extra time, whch would reduce the number of tedious periods of this added time and fewer penalty shootout lotteries.

So FIFA decided, if either team scores a goal during extra time, the scoring team becomes the winning one immediately, due to the Golden Goal.

Using the Golden Goal rule wasn’t compulsory for major competitions and when it came to the two biggest tournaments (World Cup and Euros), the first tournament was Euro ’96 when it was first used.

The benefits clearly seen in the very first major tournament final after the 1993 FIFA decision. After the game at Wembley finished 1-1 after 90 minutes, Germany rewarded for their attacking enterprise in extra-time, Oliver Bierhoff scoring their Golden Goal only five minutes into extra-time, the Czech Republic losing instantly at that point.

The 1998 World Cup finals also used the Golden Goal, whilst then the 2000 European Championships final repeated what happened in the 1996 Wembley final. This time France level 1-1 with Italy after 90 minutes, then in extra-time, David Trezeguet scored the Golden Goal winner.

However, that was the last Euros finals where the Golden Goal would be used and the 2002 World Cup was the final big tournament to use it.

So what happened… why ditch something brought in to encourage attacking play and make things more exciting in extra time?

Well, it was actually found to have the opposite effect, despite those winners in the 1996 and 2000 Euros finals.

Research and the evidence of the eye told you that actually in general, the Golden Goal made teams even more negative and cautious, as they feared pushing forward, due to the absolute punishment if that then opened them up to the opposition scoring on the break. The fear of conceding is far higher than the anticipation of potentially scoring the Golden Goal winner.

I would never have guessed it was 22 years since we had it at major tournaments, if asked, I reckon I would have probably guessed ten years ago or so if pressed for a guess.

It is very unsatisfactory to have such massive games, including finals, decided by the lottery of penalty kicks. Made all the worst when the likes of Deschamps and Southgate appeared to be more than happy to settle for them.

All kinds of solutions have been suggested down the years and I personally like the sound of one, where it was put forward to have in extra time, every 10 minutes both teams had to take a player off, the sides to be reduced 10 v 10, 9 v 9, 8 v 8 etc, until you got a winning goal.

From what I recall it was boring old health and safety got involved as usual, for some reason playing 4 v 4 after the players had already been on the pitch for three hours or whatever, was deemed to be too much of a risk.

For me, I quite like the idea of next Sunday that reducing the teams AND Golden Goal use, ending up with our old mate Jordan Pickford facing Mike Maignan 1 v 1 to score the winning Golden Goal, after having had over three hours of play and both sides reduced by ten players.