Copa América scrapped extra-time. Should other knockout tournaments?

FAnyone enjoying the football feast that is the Copa América and Euro 2024, taking place simultaneously on either side of the Atlantic Ocean this month, will have noticed one key difference between the two tournaments: there is no extra time for draws in the knockout stages of the South American championship.

Conmebol, the South American football federation, decided that there would be no extra time if the scores were tied at the end of the quarter- and semi-finals. Instead, as was the case in three of the four quarter-finals, the teams would go straight to a penalty shootout. Only if everything is tied between Argentina and Colombia at the end of the 90 minutes in the final will there be the usual 30-minute extra time.

The decision to scrap extra time has its drawbacks. The last-eight clash between Uruguay and Brazil was a particular point of contention, with Marcelo Bielsa’s team reduced to 10 men after Nahitan Nández was sent off in the 74th minute. Uruguay held on to a 1-1 draw before securing their place in the semi-finals with a 4-2 shootout win. However, had the usual practice of extra time at the end of a drawn match been in place, they would have had to play an extra half hour with a man down.

“When we were down one man we decided to focus on defending in our own half,” Bielsa said after the match.

In a normal knockout tournament, Uruguay would have held on for another 45 minutes. Instead, they were left sitting for just 20 minutes, with the game being part time-wasting and part fighting.

But while the lack of extra time at this year’s Copa América has garnered much attention, the format is not new. For most of the Copa América’s 108-year history, no extra time has been used in the final; and between 1995 and 2004, there was no extra time in the final at all. The only tournament to use extra time in every knockout round was 2011.

The format is intended to prevent player fatigue – many of the stars in the picture have recently endured long, grueling seasons at club level – and to protect the quality of football at the tournament. This year’s competition has been baked in the heat, and the removal of extra time has spared players (and fans) 30 minutes of lethargic play, leading straight into the drama of a shootout instead.

Top footballers are carrying a higher and more intense workload than ever before. Uruguayan midfielder Federico Valverde has made 52 appearances in Real Madrid’s La Liga and Champions League-winning campaign in the 2023-24 European season, playing 4,280 minutes in total. By waiving the need for extra time, the 25-year-old’s level of performance at the Copa América, where he played a key role in La Celeste’s semi-final, is likely to be maintained. By comparison, new club teammate Kylian Mbappé was below par by his standards at the European Championship after 48 appearances and 3,869 minutes of action for Paris Saint-Germain and was substituted during extra time of France’s quarter-final against Portugal.

And that workload is set to continue to grow. UEFA’s overhaul of the Champions League means clubs will play two extra games in the competition next season. There is also an ongoing row between Fifa and the international players’ union over an expanded Club World Cup, due to be held in the US in 2025, which will put an extra burden on players.

The fact that Conmebol no longer needs extra time is at least a small concession to relieve the growing pressure on the top players, even if it comes at the cost of more arbitrariness in knockout matches decided by shoot-outs.

The idea of ​​adding extra time to regain some minutes has gained at least one influential advocate in Europe.

“In a demanding tournament like the European Championship, maybe extra time could be abolished,” Luis de la Fuente, the coach of 2024 Euro finalists Spain, told reporters in Germany. He said extra time should only apply to the semi-finals and the final.

In the round of 16 and quarter-finals of this year’s edition of the tournament, five matches were tied after 90 minutes. Only two goals were scored in those five extra periods, with England beating Slovakia and Spain beating Germany. Three of the matches were still decided on penalties.

Since Euro 2000, there have been 29 extra-time periods in the knockout stages of the European Championship. In all those 30-minute blocks of extra time, a total of only 16 goals have been scored. And considering that some of those periods have featured multiple goals, only 13 of those extra-time periods have featured at least one goal. Of the 29 extra-time matches, 17 have gone to penalties.

The European Championship previously featured an interesting innovation to reduce the need for penalty kicks in the mid-1990s and early 2000s. Firstly, there was the ‘golden goal’, which was replaced by the ‘silver goal’ for the 2004 edition.

Under the golden goal rule, any goal scored in extra time automatically ended the match, with the scoring team going through – Germany beat the Czech Republic in the 1996 final on a golden goal and France beat Italy in 2000 thanks to David Trezeguet’s decisive goalThe silver goal rule changed that idea to give the team that conceded a goal a right of reply. This means that a goal scored in the first half of extra time will only end the game in favor of the scoring team if they do not concede an equalizer in extra time before halftime.

Between the 2000 and 2004 European Championships, the Gold and Silver Goal rules were in effect for a total of six periods of extra time, with three goals scored. However, the change resulted in only 35 minutes of playing time being saved. The Silver Goal was dropped after 2004, with the conventional extra-time rules being reintroduced.

The debate over whether the abolition of extra time in the Copa América should be implemented elsewhere comes down to a choice of what is better: a potential decline in the quality of play due to fatigue or a greater number of matches decided by the relative arbitrariness of penalty kicks.

But if authorities are going to increase the workload for players, then removing an extra 30 minutes from knockout tournaments is one way to curb burnout – and the tiring play that comes with it.