The golden Golden Goal

A quite common remark or wish on the forums is to remove the Golden goal, and I also saw a comment about it here. FIFA don’t use it anymore, so why would we?

Because we have good reasons to keep it.

The golden goal rule was introduced in the early 90s. The purpose with the golden goal was that it should lead to more offensive and attracting football in overtime, and also reduce the number of penalty shoot-outs. While it did reduce the amount of shoot-outs, it didn’t lead to more attacking play. Quite the contrary, it lead to more defensive play. Teams rather secured their defense to make sure they wouldn’t lose than went for the golden goal. So about 10 years after its introduction, the golden goal was replaced with ordinary extra time again.

In Hattrick however, we don’t have this problem. Hattrick teams don’t start playing more defensively in extra-time, they go for the golden goal. And the golden goal also reduces the amount of penalty shoot-outs in the game, which is a really good thing. It’s much better if the game is decided without going to penalty shoot-out. Shoot-outs is not exactly the killer feature in real football, nor in Hattrick.

Therefore it makes total sense to keep the golden goal rule in Hattrick. It does what it is supposed to do; it’s a golden solution for us.

And from what I heard lately Fifa is considering to reintroduce the golden goal. Or skip the extra-time and go directly to shoot-outs after 90 minutes. I guess that’s mostly words, but one never knows. Fifa is at least closer to changing their minds than what we are. 🙂

That said, I hope they stick to their current rule.

Tags: