Arsene Wenger today made his case for abolishing UEFA's away goal rule that serves as the primary tie-breaker in European competition. The illustrious coach of Arsenal FC told the Guardian he felt "the weight of the away goal is too heavy now tactically - it was created 42 years ago at a stage when the teams that went abroad just defended. Click to continue reading...

By Bill Edgar .. in the Times
1 Scrap the away goals rule and penalty shoot-outs in two-legged games.
2 Use goal difference before head-to-head records.
3 Introduce "celebration time" and remove punishments.
4 Book players for ANY dissent.
5 Scrap the rule that forces injured players to leave the pitch after receiving treatment before re-entering the field.

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Unlike the European Championship Qualifiers, the first round of the CIS Insurance Cup produced no real upsets, but it did provide a lot of goals - 40 in the 10 games played tonight (and that doesn't include the two penalty shoot-outs!). We being our roundup with the game we featured in our Match Programme earlier [. Click to continue reading...

Strange game format! Read the FFA Release below.

Matildas defeat China in Tianjin

The Matildas have recorded a 2-1 victory over China PR in a training match overnight in Tianjin, China.

Prior to the match, both teams agreed to play a novel match format consisting of four, thirty minute quarters, with full interchange and penalty shoot-outs at the end of the second and fourth quarters. Click to continue reading...

Statistical Analysis of Penalty Shoot-outs
by Steve Amoia for Keeper Skool

I was reading an interesting article in La Gazzetta dello Sport. They quoted a British Professor, Jon Billsbury of the Open University, about a web site that he has created for the specific purpose to study penalty kick shoot-outs.

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Zzzzzzzzzzzzz. 
Worst. Game. Ever.
This game was so dull that it really isn't worthy of a proper match report, in fact if it hadn't been for the fact that I'm blogging this tournament I would've turned this snoozefest off and watched "Big Brother" or some other vacuous Channel 4 crap.
Italy were extremely defensive and without Pirlo, who was suspended, to pull the strings in midfield, they resorted to pumping the ball forward for Luca Toni to head, scuff, mis-control and occasionally shoot everywhere but towards the direction of Casillas's goal. Click to continue reading...

Last week, in the Daily Star the so-called ‘Mr Chelsea,' John Terry, has furiously denied spitting at Carlos Tevez during Wednesday night's Champions League final after the Argentine forward accused him the following day. The incident took place during the same scuffle that saw professional waste-of-space Didier Drogba sent off for slapping Nemanja Vidic in the face. Click to continue reading...

Call it what you will... bottling it, cracking under pressure, choking...it all amounts to the same thing: history repeating itself. As both Tottenham and Everton crashed out of the UEFA Cup this week by losing a penalty shoot-out, it's starting to become an actual curse of the British Isles, infecting even foreign-born players. Click to continue reading...