Determining The Outcome Of A Match (association Football)
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__NOTOC__ Determining the Outcome of a Match is the 10th of the Laws of the Game of
association football Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 players who primarily use their feet to propel the ball around a rectangular field called a pitch. The objective of the game is ...
. It addresses two aspects of the game: * The procedure for scoring a goal * Procedures for determining, when necessary, the winner of a "drawn" match, in which each team has scored the same number of goals after 90 minutes. The current name and content of Law 10 date from 2016. From 1938 until 2016, Law 10 was titled "Method of Scoring", and addressed only the procedure for scoring a goal. Procedures for breaking ties were addressed, if at all, in a supplemental section of the laws.


Scoring a goal


Determining the winner of a drawn match

In most games, a draw is an allowable outcome. League competitions using the common
three points for a win Three points for a win is a standard used in many sports leagues and group tournaments, especially in association football, in which three points are awarded to the team winning a match, with no points awarded to the losing team. If the game is ...
system award a single point to both teams for a drawn match. However in some competitions, such as in knock-out tournaments, it is necessary to resolve a victor. Some competitions employ replays, otherwise there are three procedures permitted by Law 10 to determine the winner of a drawn match: # the away goals rule (for two-legged matches only) # extra time, consisting of two periods of 15 minutes each # a
penalty shoot-out The penalty shootout is a method of determining a winner in sports matches that would have otherwise been drawn or tied. The rules for penalty shootouts vary between sports and even different competitions; however, the usual form is similar to pe ...
Normally these are applied in the order listed above — i.e. for a two legged match, extra time is played if the away goals rule does not determine a victor. After extra time, if the score is still level, a penalty shoot-out takes place. In a few cup competitions extra time is ignored completely and the game goes directly to penalties. Most of the time this applies to the whole tournament and as is decided before the tournament begins, but on rare occasions can be decided for individual games before kick off. Examples of where this happens include the EFL Cup and County Cups.


History


Before 1863

Most codes of football from before 1863 provided only one means of scoring (typically called the "goal", although
Harrow football Harrow football is a code of football played between two teams of eleven players, each attempting to win by scoring more bases (goals) than their opponent. Harrow Football is played predominantly with the feet, but players may use any part of ...
used the word "base"). The two major exceptions (the
Eton field game The Field Game is one of two codes of football devised and played at Eton College. The other is the Eton Wall Game. The game is like association football in some ways – the ball is round, but one size smaller than a standard football, and may n ...
and
Sheffield rules The Sheffield Rules was a code of football devised and played in the English city of Sheffield between 1858 and 1877. The rules were initially created and revised by Sheffield Football Club, with responsibility for the laws passing to the Sh ...
, which borrowed the concept from Eton) both used the "rouge" (a touchdown, somewhat similar to a try in today's rugby) as a tie-breaker.


The 1863 FA laws

The 1863 laws of the game provided for only one means of scoring: the goal. There was no procedure to break ties.


The "touch down"

In February 1866, association football briefly adopted a tie-breaker known as the "touch down" (plural: "touches down"). This "touch down" had similarities to the "rouge" used in the
Eton field game The Field Game is one of two codes of football devised and played at Eton College. The other is the Eton Wall Game. The game is like association football in some ways – the ball is round, but one size smaller than a standard football, and may n ...
and
Sheffield rules The Sheffield Rules was a code of football devised and played in the English city of Sheffield between 1858 and 1877. The rules were initially created and revised by Sheffield Football Club, with responsibility for the laws passing to the Sh ...
, and also to the ''try'' in today's rugby codes. It was defined thus: An example of a game being decided by "touches down" is Barnes FC v. Civil Service FC, played on Saturday December 8th, 1866. The match "resulted in a victory for the Civil Service by three touches down to none, no goal being obtained by either side". In the historic London v. Sheffield match played on March 31st 1866, "London" (a representative team from the Football Association) won by two goals and four touches down to nil. The "touch down" lasted only one year. It was abolished in February 1867, on the basis of a proposal by
Wanderers FC Wanderers Football Club was an English association football club. It was founded as "Forest Football Club" in 1859 in Leytonstone. In 1864, it changed its name to "Wanderers", a reference to it never having a home stadium, instead playing at v ...
. FA Secretary Robert Graham later explained the benefit of its removal, writing that "the whole play is now directed to obtaining a goal, whereas formerly this chief object in the game was frequently lost sight of in the efforts to obtain a 'touch down'".


Explicit statement that the goal is the only means of scoring

In 1923, the following statement was added to the Laws of the Game: This change was made in order to prevent the use of the
corner-kick A corner kick is the method of restarting play in a game of association football when the ball goes out of play over the goal line, without a goal being scored and having last been touched by a member of the defending team. The kick is taken ...
as a tie-breaker.


Drawing of lots

Between 1867 and 1970, the laws of the game said nothing about the means by which ties should be broken in a tournament which required a definitive result. The most common practice, as seen in the 1928 Olympics "consolation final" and the semi-final of the 1968 European Championships, was to use a random procedure such as drawing of lots or tossing a coin.


Use of corner-kicks as tiebreaker

Despite the 1923 law mentioned above, the
Dublin City Cup The Dublin City Cup is a defunct Irish football tournament which was played for by all League of Ireland sides (and not just those from Dublin city as the name suggests). It ran from 1933 and ran uninterrupted until 1973. In the 1975–76 se ...
(until the 1960s) and Dublin and Belfast Inter-City Cup (in the 1940s) used corner count as a tiebreaker in knockout rounds.


Penalty shoot-out

The use of drawing of lots was "discontinued" by the
International Football Association Board The International Football Association Board (IFAB) is the body that determines the Laws of the Game of association football. IFAB was founded in 1886 to agree standardised Laws for international competition, and has since acted as the "guardia ...
at its 1970 meeting, to be replaced by the
penalty shoot-out The penalty shootout is a method of determining a winner in sports matches that would have otherwise been drawn or tied. The rules for penalty shootouts vary between sports and even different competitions; however, the usual form is similar to pe ...
.


Golden goal

The
golden goal The golden goal or golden point is a rule used in association football, lacrosse, field hockey, and ice hockey to decide the winner of a match (typically a knock-out match) in which scores are equal at the end of normal time. It is a type of sud ...
, originally known as "sudden death", was a procedure introduced experimentally in 1993, by which the first team to score during extra-time was declared to be the winner. The golden goal was used at the
1998 1998 was designated as the ''International Year of the Ocean''. Events January * January 6 – The ''Lunar Prospector'' spacecraft is launched into orbit around the Moon, and later finds evidence for frozen water, in soil in permanently s ...
and 2002 World Cup tournaments, before being abolished in 2004. During the latter part of this period, a variant known as the "
silver goal The golden goal or golden point is a rule used in association football, lacrosse, field hockey, and ice hockey to decide the winner of a match (typically a knock-out match) in which scores are equal at the end of normal time. It is a type of sud ...
" was also used.


References

{{Association football laws Laws of association football