Matthew Bazell
The away-goal law for two-legged ties was introduced by UEFA as long ago as 1965 for a Cup Winners Cup match between Budapest Honved and Dukla Prague. The aim was to encourage more attacking play from the away side, and it is a ruling that’s been around for so long that hardly anyone ever raises a debate as to whether or not it achieves its purpose. Therefore I was glad recently to see Wenger make a suggestion to UEFA that it’s time for this law to be scrapped.
The argument that such a ruling encourages more attacking play is flawed for the simple reason that a 1-0 win for the home team is a lot better than a 2-1 win. On occasions, it will make the home team more nervous, more conservative and cagier.
Instead of making the game more enthralling, it can actually kill off a tie earlier than it would if no away-goal ruling were in place. Take for example the time when Man United beat us in the 2008-09 Champions League Semi-Final. They won the first leg 1-0 at Old Trafford. Within ten minutes of the second leg, Park Ji Sung scored to make it 2-0 on aggregate. That meant we needed three goals without reply, which realistically made the final outcome more predictable. When football becomes more predictable, it loses its edge in terms of excitement, thereby defeating the purpose of the away-goals ruling. Had Arsenal, the weaker team at the time, needed just the two goals to level, then the game would have carried a lot more suspense.
There is a philosophical dilemma to the whole question of a team winning a tie on the basis of away goals scored: why should a 2-0 away win for one team be of any less value than a 3-1 away win for the other team? The answer many will give is that one team managed the feat of scoring three goals away from home, to which some might reply – so what? Why is that more exciting? Why is that more of an achievement? At least the team who lost 3-1 gave their home support a goal to cheer for.
In the 2011-12 Champions League second round, Barcelona won 3-1 at the home of Bayer Leverkusen. Now, imagine what an achievement it would have been had Bayer won 2-0 at the return leg at the Nou Camp. They would have levelled the game on goals scored and such a result would have been hailed as an heroic effort. Yet even had such a miracle happened (they did in fact get smashed 7-1!) then they still would have gone out, despite matching Barça over two legs. I didn’t bother to watch the second leg of that live ITV game because, as a neutral, I like to watch football when it’s a bit more evenly matched and harder to predict. Okay, it would have been wishful thinking that Bayer would win 2-0 at the Nou Camp. But to hope that they might have scored three goals without reply would be enough to get you sectioned.
Of course, in 2013 this scenario was played out by us and Bayern Munich and if someone would like to make a compelling argument that Munich’s 3-1 away win was more of an achievement than our 2-0 than I’d be interested to hear it.
Matthew Bazell is the author of Theatre of Silence: The Lost Soul of Football.
