Football’s Tiebreaking Methods Before Penalty Shootouts

Penalty shootouts are now a familiar climax in football, a high-pressure duel where skill, focus, and nerves determine the winner. Every kick carries the weight of a team’s hopes, and players, fans, and coaches feel the intensity. Before 1970 however, tournaments offered no such clarity. After 120 minutes, teams could see their fates decided by something as random as a coin flip. Matches that demanded strategy, endurance, and talent could be undone by pure luck.

These chaotic tie-breaking methods, replays, coin tosses, and drawing lots, exposed a flaw in early football rules. They prioritized expediency over fairness, leaving teams and fans frustrated, until necessity forced the creation of a fairer, skill-based solution: the penalty shootout.

The first solution for a tie was simple: replay the match. Teams would meet again, sometimes days or even weeks later, to settle the score. While fair in theory, this approach was a logistical nightmare. International tournaments had fixed schedules, travel commitments, and stadium availability constraints. Replaying matches disrupted planning and could affect other games in the tournament.

Some finals received special treatment. For example, the 1968 European Championship final between Italy and Yugoslavia required a replay, while earlier rounds often resorted to arbitrary solutions. In minor competitions, unusual tie-breakers were briefly tested, counting corner kicks or even “touches down”, but these methods were quickly abandoned for being impractical and unsatisfying.

Replays highlighted a key tension in early football: the sport demanded a winner, but real-world logistics often made an on-pitch resolution impossible. This conflict opened the door to more desperate and random measures, setting the stage for coin tosses and drawing lots as the ultimate, though deeply unsatisfying, solution.
When replays were impossible, chance became the final decider. Coin tosses or drawing lots determined which team advanced, often right on the spot. The coin toss offered a quick, visible solution, while drawing lots was the formalized procedure.

For players, the experience was surreal. After exhausting themselves for 120 minutes, their fate could be sealed by a simple flip. Teams that had dominated possession or created more chances could still be eliminated by pure luck. Fans were equally frustrated, watching months of preparation and effort reduced to a random outcome. While practical for organizers, these methods highlighted a philosophical problem: football, a game of skill and strategy, was being decided by pure chance.

Coin tosses and lots were widely criticized, but for early tournaments, they were often the only feasible solution. They exposed the sport’s vulnerability to logistical constraints and set the stage for a more skill-based tiebreaker.

The 1968 European Championship semifinal in Naples is the most infamous example of pre-shootout absurdity. Italy, the host nation, faced the Soviet Union in a tense, cautious match. After 120 minutes, the score remained 0-0, leaving no winner on the pitch.

To resolve the tie, captains Giacinto Facchetti and Albert Shesternev were escorted to the dressing room for a coin toss. One flip decided which team would advance to the final. Facchetti sprinted back to the field to signal victory to 70,000 cheering fans, while the Soviet team left in disbelief. Months of preparation, strategy, and athletic effort had been reduced to pure luck.

Italy went on to win the tournament after a replayed final, but the coin toss remained a notorious footnote. The episode highlighted the absurdity of early tie-breaking rules: tournaments required winners, but the methods used often undermined merit and fairness. It became a turning point that emphasized the need for a decisive, skill-based solution.

High-profile incidents like the 1968 European Championship semifinal and the 1968 Olympic quarter-final between Israel and Bulgaria sparked widespread frustration. Players, coaches, and fans were left feeling cheated, as months of preparation and skillful play were erased by chance. The anticlimax was undeniable, and the need for a fairer solution became clear.

Innovators began proposing alternatives. Israeli Yosef Dagan, upset after Israel’s Olympic team lost by drawing lots, advocated for a method that tested skill rather than luck. German referee Karl Wald suggested a penalty shootout as a practical, decisive option. Initially, the International Football Association Board (IFAB) hesitated, arguing that individual spot-kicks might reduce a team sport to a duel. Yet the combination of fairness, clarity, and logistical practicality eventually won out. The shootout promised a resolution tied to skill and nerve, satisfying players, fans, and organizers alike.

The penalty shootout, formally adopted by IFAB in 1970, offered a compromise: a fast, decisive way to resolve ties that relied on skill, not chance. While controversial, it rewarded composure, technique, and goalkeeper ability, restoring legitimacy to tournament outcomes.

The coin toss remains a strange relic of football history, a reminder that, for a time, logistical pressures and the need for a winner outweighed fairness and sporting merit. The legacy of this Tiebreaking method underscores how the sport evolved to balance practicality with competition, giving players and fans results that feel earned, not arbitrary.