In 1889, Bolton Wanderers and West Bromwich Albion finished fifth and sixth respectively in the Football League First Division. They had both finished on twenty-two points, their records identical (ten wins, two draws, ten losses), and both scored and conceded goals for fun - Bolton beat West Brom 5-1 away and lost 2-1 at home.
How to separate the two? By goal average, obviously - the ratio of goals scored to goals conceded. The higher the goal average, the better you are at scoring loads whilst barely conceding; the reverse is true as your goal average decreases.
Two years later in 1891, up in Scotland, Dumbarton and Rangers had a similar predicament to Bolton and West Brom - this time, however, the title of Scottish league champions was on the line. Both had finished on twenty-nine points that season, and similarly to Bolton and West Brom were rather similar head-to-head: Dumbarton won 5-1 at home; Rangers won 4-2 at home.How to separate the two? By scheduling a play-off, obviously - a separate match played at a neutral venue, in this case at Caithkin Park. The match ended 2-2, so the two teams shared the title that season.
Goal average has many benefits - one of them is that it encourages defensive play, which in turn can wield positive results for a team as they're less likely to lose. The problem, however, is that this can be boring to watch. Imagine if every team played as defensively as possible - you'd probably have a ninety minute nap instead.
There's another, more mathematical reason as to why goal average isn't so great. If you've not conceded a single goal in the whole tournament (such as England at the 1966 World Cup group stage), you don't have a goal average because you can't divide by zero.
Enter goal difference, first used in the 1970 World Cup in Mexico. This is perhaps more intuitive than goal average, and perhaps more in favour of high scoring teams (as a team winning 6-3 has the same goal average as a team that wins 2-1, but they have a higher goal difference). It's merely goals scored - goals conceded. Easy.
But wait. You're either the Soviet Union or Mexico and you've got the same record in each match and the same goal difference in Group A in 1970. Win the group and you face Uruguay, finish second and you face Italy.
The eggheads at FIFA came up with a genius solution to resolve this situation - not by goals scored (which sees the Soviet Union come out on top), but by drawing of lots. Because what's better than pure luck to decide who has the better chance at success? The Soviet Union won the group based on this method, but both teams lost in the quarter-finals anyways, so at least any mild annoyance was averted.
At a semi-final of the 1968 European Championships, however, Yugoslavians may have been mildly annoyed that their match against Italy ended with a coin toss. Italy won the toss and went through to the final, which they won. Thankfully, you're unlikely to witness anything like this occur nowadays in a knockout match, thanks to the penalty shootout.
The rules of a penalty shootout are simple - the two teams take turns to take penalties in a best-of-five contest. Whoever scores the most out of five wins; if neither team has more penalties scored than the opponent, they carry on one penalty at a time until there's a winner. This is how most knockout matches are decided nowadays, unless you're watching the FA Cup, where your team will have to face a replay first (up to the fifth round) before there could be a penalty shootout after extra time.
However, you might not even get the penalty shootout if you've scored more goals away...
Back in the 1960s, you would play two matches - one at home, one away. This would be annoying if you had to travel out to, say, the Soviet Union if you were from Portugal, and vice versa.
How to solve this conundrum? Through the away goals rule. Simply put, whichever team scores more goals on the road than the other, provided the teams are tied after two matches, goes through. Hilarity ensues if the two teams share a stadium, such as Lazio and Roma at the Stadio Olimpico - one team is thus designated an away tie when the other's at home, and vice versa. This situation actually occurred in 2003, when AC Milan knocked Inter Milan out of the Champions League due to this technicality. UEFA doesn't observe the away goals rule anymore, probably as it's easier to get to Russia to play in Europe (when you could play Russian teams in Europe), or say, Kazakhstan, Israel, Azerbaijan...
There are other ways to decide who goes through/is ranked higher if you play twice - your head-to-head record.
In many football tournaments, goal difference is used to differentiate between teams. This is good and all, for it takes into account all teams and can be used whenever throughout the season, but if you want to differentiate between two teams, surely it is wiser to take just those two teams' results into account. Whoever fared better in those two matches is ranked higher, and that's that.
Of course, you can do this with as many teams as possible, as happened in Group C in Euro 2004, where Sweden and Denmark knocked out Italy. On this occasion, however, Italy lost out due to head-to-head goals scored, due to a contentious 2-2 draw between Denmark and Sweden. Indeed, the biggest issue with this method of separating teams is that, should their head-to-head record be equal, you have to resort to other methods of separation.
Let's get even more insane with the golden goal and its annoying younger brother, the silver goal. In the case of the golden goal:if both teams are level, during extra time, next goal wins. If no goal is scored, advance onto penalties.
This rule has been a screw-up for many teams. France knocked out Paraguay at the 1998 World Cup, and so did South Korea when they beat Italy in the 2002 World Cup. Only occasionally did it actually decide a trophy, however - Germany when they beat Sweden in the 2003 Women's World Cup final, France beating Cameroon 1-0 in the Confederations Cup final, Liverpool beating Alaves 5-4 in the UEFA Cup final, Germany against Czechia in the 1996 Euros final, France against Italy in the 2000 Euros final...Senegal won and lost by virtue of a golden goal in consecutive matches in 2002. They thankfully scrapped this rule after Euro 2004 because making a sport more exciting shouldn't make it more stupid at the same time.
The silver goal is arguably more insane. Score in the first half of extra time, and if you're still leading at the end of that half, you win. The other team could always score, however, before that half ended. The only truly notable time this rule was applied was in Euro 2004, when Greece beat Czechia in the semi-finals by virtue of this goal. The only problem with this goal was that it was scored right at the death, so Czechia couldn't realistically respond. Unsurprisingly, the rule was scrapped after the tournament as well. Indeed, the problem with both of these rules is that the other team doesn't have a say in what happens after the golden goal, and they have too little a say in the case of the silver goal. Good riddance, I say.
I could go on and talk about Game 39 and the number of corners being used as a tiebreaker or yellow cards and so on, but I suppose all these methods have their own flaws, and can be frustratingly inconsisent (from an outsider's perspective), not least if applied in confusing ways. Hellas Verona beat Spezia in a playoff, for example, to stay up in Serie A last season. Both had the same number of points, and under the Serie A rules, a playoff was scheduled.
However, before last season, no such rule existed. In 2019, for example, Genoa stayed up instead of Empoli due to a better head-to-head record. Indeed, this is how all other positions in Serie A are decided. Even more egregiously, Spezia should have stayed up regardless for they had the more favourable head-to-head record with Hellas Verona and a better goal difference in those matches to boot. Yet the rules let Hellas Verona get away with going down.
All in all, football is too confusing and makes no sense. And that's why it's fun writing blogposts about it.
Don't get me started on the 1 Liga from 1986-90 in Poland (now the Ekstraklasa). Lose a match by three or more goals and you lose a point, win by three or more goals and you gain an extra point...
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