There's been quite a bit of discussion on here about how, erm, dull the last two knockout matches were, both resulting in a 1-1 draw where not much else happened. I thought we could share our ideas of how to maybe improve it here.

 

I was thinking about this last night and had the idea that instead of the winner of Match A playing the winner of Match B etc., the winning teams could be ranked in a similar way to how teams on the same points are ranked (i.e. goal difference, then goals scored). The team at the top of that rank would then play the team at the bottom of the rank in the next round, the second highest team playing the second lowest and so on. It could give teams an incentive to score more goals because they would be less likely to end up playing one of the big names in the next round. (But then again, that could all go horribly wrong and we end up with a massively one-sided tournament)

 

Any other ideas?

The two periods of extra-time have both been very poor.

 

If they had the penalty shoot-out before extra-time then at least one side would always have an incentive to score. Whoever lost the shoot-out would know that winning ink extra-time was their only chance of going through.

 

Of course, that wouldn't have helped make the last 86 minutes of normal time in Croatia v Denmark any better.

 

Pete's idea is an interesting one. If (as I assume is the intention) it is only used to determine the fixtures from the quarter-final onwards (i.e. the last-16 matches are still decided by group positions) it shouldn't be too lop-sided.

Sweden vs Switzerland on paper certainly looks like it will be the next match to go to extra time tomorrow!

Edited July 2, 20187 yr by The Snake

So using my idea, the ranking after the Round of 16 would give us:

 

1. Brazil (GD: 2)

2. France (GD: 1, GS: 4)

3. Belgium (GD: 1, GS: 3)

4. Uruguay (GD: 1, GS: 2)

5. Sweden (GD: 1, GS: 1)

6. Croatia (GD: 0, GS: 1, FP: 0)

7. England (GD: 0, GS: 1, FP: -2) (Resort to Group Stage performance in which England were better)

8. Russia (GD: 0, GS: 1, FP: -2) (Resort to Group Stage performance in which Russia were worse)

 

Which would give us:

 

Brazil vs Russia

France vs England

Belgium vs Croatia

Uruguay vs Sweden

 

Evens the teams out nicely, and sticks the teams which relied on penalties to get them through against the big teams.