Penalty kicks are the worst way to decide the winner of a game. College football's "let's just put the ball at the 25 because if make these young men drive the entire field to score, like they did for four quarters already, they might never walk again" overtime is a close second, but PKs have been bullshit for longer, so it's worse. I also don't like the fact that the deciding factor of a soccer match resembles very little of actual play, instead using only one aspect of the sport (and a relative rare one at that) to bequeath a winner. Would you be OK if a basketball game was decided with free throws? Because essentially that is what soccer does. In my opinion, they need to do away with penalties and just install an overtime that just keeps going, first goal wins. At the very least bring back the golden goal. What can be more dramatic than a tally that ends a match?
The stakes are obviously much higher when the game in question is a championship. Thus, settling that with PKs is even more egregious and unfitting of the tight 120 minutes played up to this contrived tie-breaker. Don't get me wrong, penalty kicks are dramatic. I still remember watching the 2011 Women's World Cup Final, where the United States biffed their first two kicks and basically gave the title to Japan. And Saturday afternoon's ridiculous extended PK session, where they had to double the number of kicks in order to decide the championship of Major League Soccer, was certainly enthralling, even if in the back of my mind I was telling myself that there had to be a better, more appropriate way of picking a winner and a loser.
My opinion is only fortified further because of what happened to Lovel Palmer, Defender for Real Salt Lake:
Yeah, you can say that Palmer should have made the kick. And you wouldn't be wrong. But after all he did since coming into the game, after all both teams did to get to that point, there had to be something better than spotting a ball so many yards away from the goal and having him kick it. What makes this worse is that the Goalkeeper, Jimmy Nielsen of Sporting Kansas City (who, by the way, looks like an English teacher), didn't even have to make a save; Palmer hit it off the crossbar. Basically, Lovel Palmer stopped his own shot. And because of his poor aim, Real Salt Lake lost MLS Cup 2013.
The advent of cameras being allowed on the field of play has greatly enhanced the production values of watching a game on television. The on-pitch cameraman was in perfect position to capture Palmer's look of absolute dejection after he doinked his PK off the crossbar, giving RSL the loss. And when the view panned to his face and zoomed in as he was walking towards the camera and his teammates ... well, as a broadcast journalism major I love that indelible image, even though I feel for Palmer at that moment so badly I couldn't stand to look at him.
Poor bastard.
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