What's the fairest way to decide a tied soccer game?

Dueling pistols at ten paces.

Tiddlywinks?

If there must be a winner, and extra time hasn't made one, penalties are as good as any other way, and much better than a coin toss.

1. It uses a modicum of skill so with two teams that have shown they are equally good, one teams skill at penalties is proven to be better than the other.

2. Drama! Soccer is a spectator sport and a penalty shootout gives the audience closure.

3. blame and/or praise can be laid upon one player.

I would like to see what would happen if the teams had to play overtime with fewer players. Let's say they start overtime with 10 players, then after 7 1/2 minutes one more player leaves, then at the end of first period they are reduced to 8, and for the last quarter, to 7. Maybe there could be two extra substitutions in overtime. 

Not sure how to deal with situations where one or more players have been red-carded. Maybe only take out players until one or both teams still have seven players in the field.

i kind of agree with this but i have a slightly different ruling- you havent said what would happen after the last 'quarter' 

we would still end up with pens.

the red card is a good point though. in my situation i would deduct the players to a maximum of 2 from the off. no reset - if you have 10 players after 90 - you would have one less than the opposition on extra time.

i think if we start with 5 players as well there would never be the need of a pen shoot out. 7 is too many imo. If you end up with 2 players -well 5-2 a goal is going to happen. and no advantage as no on starts with the ball.


or we could go multi ball.

keep the players on. add a ball to play ever 3 minutes.....

For both soccer and hockey:

Make it slightly easier to score, by making the net bigger. Not too much of a change at first. They should try increasing the nets by small amounts each year until it becomes just slightly easier to score. Make it so that typical scores are around 10-15 points per team per game. Or in other words, so that you can expect a hockey team to score every 4 to 6 minutes (on the game clock), and a soccer team every 6-9 minutes.

We should be seeing hockey and soccer scores that are in the range of 10-9, 8-6, 12-7, 15-13, etc. This would also help from a fan perspective. If your team is down two or three goals and there's five minutes left, you easily feel like you still have a reasonable chance (rather than leaving the game early because you know you're out in lieu of a miracle).   It also gets rid of those games where a team scores a goal in the first three minutes and then the game ends up being 1-0.  Those are serious downers.  Especially if your team isn't the one who scored the first goal.  Those games make it seem like it's virtually impossible to score and you start wondering why you're even bothering with them.

Anyway, once you do the above, simply have sudden death overtimes a la basketball in the event of a tie. Someone will score in overtime if it's slightly easier to score.

another touted soloution is a player dribbles from the half way line to score v the keeper (same rules as pens)


us in England hate pens for obvious reasons. but its very simple but it requires bottle. its horrid too lose (felt it 6 times ) but no complaints, just pain.

what we dont want though is to put more pressure on players and make them more fatigued if we change the soloution or put it on stats.

Keep going with 15 minutes periods of extra time until you have a winner. I don't care if it takes all night.