Does Football need a 'Mercy Rule'?

Let me start by saying that I was supporting Germany in yesterday’s match and I, along with most football fans, am well aware of Brazil’s prowess in the sport of football. So it was not like everyone expected Brazil to lose by this embarrassing margin (though most of us had a feeling that Germany doesn’t have a mammoth task at hand). So what I’m about to suggest is not due to any changes in my mindset, which might have crept in after watching what happened yesterday but it’s just a possibility that might advocate what some people refer to as ‘sportsmanship’.

The pain

I was watching the match, goal after goal after goal like there was an inside German joke going which obviously the Brazilians were in no mood to comprehend. But apart form my joy in watching Germany netting goals like the bullets of World War 2 German snipers, there was a weird sense of sadness that creased my forehead every time the camera focused on the face of a Brazil fan.

Now it’s not that there haven’t been heartbreaks before but this was just too painful to bear. And almost everyone might agree with the fact that after the scoreline was 5-0, there was no way that Brazil could have come back, not with the way the Germans were playing. So is there any way in which the embarrassment could have stopped? Seems there is.

In some sports, mostly in the United States of America, a rule known as "mercy rule," or "slaughter rule" exists,which aims at minimizing the humiliation to the losing side. But it works only if it’s obvious that the losing team has no chance of getting back into the game and if they continue, nothing better would come of it but ounces of humiliation and a severe blow to confidence and self-respect. This rule is used in some sports already.

Little League Baseball has this rule where the match can be ended if the winning team is leading by 10 or more runs after the end of 4 innings. But here, it is because the parents realize that nothing will be achieved with a huge defeat but for a plummeting in the self respect of the kids at a tender age.Apart from this, the rule is also used at College Baseball and High School Baseball. In the NCAA rules and regulations hand guide, they have what they call a "Ten-Run Rule". It says "by conference rule, or mutual consent of both coaches before the contest, a game may be stopped only after seven innings if one team is ahead by at least 10 runs.”In High School Basketball, if a team is leading by 30 points, the clock will run, not taking into account the whistle stoppages. This will create a lesser chance of the leading team to completely crush the losing team.

So the only problem in applying this rule to Football at higher levels like World Cup is the fact that the score is not very high. At any point, the match can be considered recoverable. Also, due to the fan-base of football, specially at the World Cup level, it might be not in the best interests of the team to ‘quit’ a match or accept a defeat by simply not playing, considering football players prefer to be like Vikings/Spartans from 300, who would rather die in the battlefield instead of accepting their imminent loss.

It’s all based on how relatively humiliating both the options are. But there’s an exception to this rule.The International Blind Sports Federation, which organizes Para-Olympics and other tournaments for visually impaired athletes, requires that any time during a soccer game that one team has scored ten more goals than the other team that game is deemed completed. Of course it’s by the mutual consent of the coaches and no coach in football is likely to accept defeat till the whistle signals the end of play.