YokelRidesAgain said:
Very troubling draw for FIFA in that by game time tomorrow it may be very clear that England and Belgium would be best served by losing their match.
How would a match play out if both teams were actually unashamedly attempting to lose? At first I thought it would be basically the same as regular soccer, except each team attempting to score in the opposite goal as normal (i.e., both trying to score as many own goals as possible).
Then I thought about the bizarre effects various rules would have. You couldn't be offsides on the attack, but could when playing it back. There would be no goalie on defense, but one attacking player could use his hands in the attacking box. A foul by the attacking team in the box would result in a penalty kick for the defending team, which they would of course deliberately miss, while a foul by the defending team in the box would result in only a direct free kick. A missed shot across the goal line would result in a corner kick for the defending team, and a ball out off the defending team would result in a goal kick for the attacking team, who would want to kick it directly into the goal but couldn't because a goal kick has to go outside the penalty box before it is in play. It would definitely be a challenge to referee such a match.
Then I realized that, since the attacking team would get the ensuing kick-off after a goal, the first half would likely simply consist of the team with the opening kick off playing it back directly into their own goal off a kick-off repeatedly for the entire half, since it is unlikely that the "defense" could get to the other side of the field in time to stop them. The second half would consist of the other team doing the same, and whoever could repeat that more times within their 45 minutes would "win" (i.e., lose). Perhaps the other team could try to disrupt this by trying to commit a foul off the ball before the ball goes into the goal off the kick-off, and, if they did, it would have to be called rather than allowing the advantage because technically there is no advantage to scoring an own goal. But the team kicking off could try to keep all their players far enough away from the other teams' players to avoid being fouled.
But I guess the best strategy would be for both teams to try to be the first to get five red cards and thereby forfeit (presumably by starting five scrubs, since the red-carded players would be ineligible for the next match, which the team would actually want to win, in the traditional sense).
