The away goal rule: amendments required?

Picture this. Your club, after a roller coaster ride of a season, has finally made it to the semifinals of the Champions League. It has bowed out of the title race in the league and been eliminated from other knockout competitions as well, and this is effectively the sole route to glory.

They perform brilliantly in the first leg away from home, although they couldn’t score and the game ended with no goals. The fans thronged the stadium in the second leg hoping to witness their team progressing and playing at Wembley. It looked like it could be a dream come true with your team having scored once, only to be denied progression by conceding an all important away goal in the dying seconds of the game.

Soon reality sinks in, and you realise that a game that you were comfortably winning, all of a sudden knocks you out of the competition at such a crucial stage, even though you are level on aggregate goals.

Welcome to the cruel world of away goals.

Introduced by UEFA in 1965, it has received a lot of criticism from fans around the world time and again. Although some would say it is a fair way of judging a winner in a grueling tie, as scoring away from home deserves more credit than a goal scored amidst home support, there are a few questionable points that should be brought to light.

Should the rule be applied to group stages?

In the 2000-01 season of the Champions League, Lyon and Olympiakos were drawn in the same group. The fixture in France led to a 1-0 win for the home side, while the reverse fixture in Greece ended in a 2-1 win for the Greeks with Lyon scoring that one away goal towards the end of the game. Little did they know that it was that solitary goal that would see them progress to the Round of 16, after they were tied on points with the Greek side.

Did the rule work out doing justice to both sides here? Although there’s no denying the fact that Lyon did deserve the advantage, there are two sides to the story. Maybe if Olympiakos had played the away fixture knowing the importance of it, they would have probably fielded a better squad and played with more intent.

Although they have nobody but themselves to blame for it, it implies that even during the group stages of a competition, every club would have to play each game like a final and bring its best players on to the pitch despite issues like fatigue, having played a league or cup game a couple of days back.

But away goals are the third tiebreaker in the group stages, so it’s not as much of a concern as other areas are where this rule needs to be touched upon.

Home or away first?

Some feel that playing at home in the first leg of a knockout competition is unfair as it puts the home team under pressure of conceding an away goal and so they aren’t able to take advantage of the fixture.

However, the fact that this is decided based on the group stage standings, makes it fair as it depends on how the club performs and if they top the group, they don’t have to worry about this.

Should away goals be considered only after a particular condition is satisfied?

Consider the Round of 16 clash between Arsenal and Bayern Munich last season. The fixture at the Emirates ended in 3-1 in favour of the Germans. The tie seemed virtually over as the Gunners travelled across Europe for the away game. But everyone was in for a surprise as they won the game 2-0, losing out on away goals.

From the game it was evident that Bayern were looking to rest on the first leg score, while Arsenal were the team that needed to score. Neuer’s infamous “Don’t take my baby away” act when Arsenal drew level, showed how the German superpower were simply trying to while away time. Although it is a tactic used by most teams nowadays, the fact that they did so at home, raises questions.

Should away goals be considered in favour of a team that couldn’t find the net at their own ground? Or should it go to extra time?These are debatable topics and views would differ so it would be difficult to arrive at a definite conclusion.

Away goals in extra time?

This would have to be the most important point that the UEFA needs to reconsider.

Consider a fixture between two teams, say Manchester United and Barcelona. After 90 minutes at Old Trafford, the game ended 1-1.

In the reverse fixture, they drew with the same scoreline. Since both teams have one away goal, it would lead to extra time.

Here, even though Barcelona have the advantage of playing at home for the additional 30 minutes, the English club have more time than the Catalans had to score an extra away goal. So now for every goal that they score, Barcelona will need to score two, in that short period of time.

In such cases, the UEFA should probably look at the rules set by the CONCACAF and AFC Champions League which take away goals into consideration only up to the end of regular time. After that, the team start afresh in extra time.

When both games are played in the same stadium?

AC Milan and Inter Milan were drawn to play each other in the semifinals of the 2003 edition of the Champions League. Since they shared the same stadium, both fixtures were played there with the Inter supporters playing visitors in the first leg and hosts in the second.

Here, away goals seemed fair as they were both accustomed to the ground and supporters thronged the stadium as they did not have far to go to witness the crucial tie.

But what if you had to travel across countries to cheer your team in a “home tie” for a not so important game?

This happened when Australia played Israel in the 1991 World Youth Championship and both fixtures were held in Australia for security reasons. Both matches were like home games for the Australians in terms of support and experience of playing on that field.

Despite a valiant effort by the Israelis, they were knocked out on away goals. A similar situation was encountered when the Bahamas beat the British Virgin Islands vis-à-vis the same rule during a World Cup 2010 qualifier where both games were played on Caribbean soil.

In such cases, would it be fair to decide a team’s fate in this way?

Although this rule does apply fairly to an extent, it does have shortcomings that need to be looked into, to avoid deserving teams feel hard done by.

Generalising a rule seems unjust in particular scenarios and therefore needs amendment accordingly. Let’s hope the European Football Association is listening.