Away goals
Hans Keller
By sheer accident, at the quarter-final and semi-final stages of the European competitions, I saw more matches this season than ever before--and that made me think more about their unique legislation than ever before.
I was at both of West Ham's semi-final Matches against Eintracht Frankfurt, after had seen, on Spanish television, the whole of the second leg of the quarter-final tie between Real Madrid and Borussia Monchengladbach. And in Frankfurt, back at my hotel after Eintracht's match against West Ham, Germany's excellent, singularly honest, factual television coverage of most of the Other European games ('We are now cutting from the thirteenth to the twenty-seventh minute, because ...') made it possible for me to take in all the essential stages of Real Madrid v. Bayern Munich and S.V. Hamburg v. F.C. Brugge. For the first time in my life, I have thus been able to isolate common Characteristics of such widely different confrontations.
Superficially, but none the less significant1Y, the proportion, or rather disproportion, of draws between strong, natural attacking sides seems unparalleled in any two-leg competition, present or past, without the current European rule that away goals count double when the aggregate score is a draw. Take the performances of the World ChamPions' champion club, Bayern Munich, and history's greatest European Cup side, Real Madrid. Against Borussia Monchengladbach, the latter drew 2-2 away and `won' 1-1 at home—in a match that brought home to me, for the first time, the possible or likely effect of the away-goal rule, i.e. defensive Play, the veil), thing the new rule is supposed to avoid. Only, in a second leg, it's not the awaY side that's guilty of defensive mania; it's the home side, trying to prevent the away side from scoring, and/or to protect its OW n away goals, whereas in a first leg, it tends to be both of them—the away side, as of old, awaiting the advantage of the home
game and labouring under the pressure of the foreign ground. Having advanced to the semi-final against Bayern Munich without winning either of the quarter-final matches, Real Madrid were knocked out of the European Cup without even winning at home: defensively, they drew I-1 at home, and last week Bayern Munich won 2-0.
In the UEFA Cup, meanwhile, S.V. Hamburg were so obsessed with defence in' their home leg that they eventually cracked and went down 0-1 in the forty-eighth minute; they then had quite a job equalising in the seventy-seventh minute, and thus 'achieving' a home draw. Again, Barcelona failed to attack Liverpool at home and so lost 0-1, getting no further than the predictable draw in the second leg last week.
But even though no draw was involved, the most illuminating tie, the most unambiguous verdict on the consequences of the away-goal rule, was the semi-final of the European Cup Winners' Cup between Eintracht Frankfurt and West Ham. Here were two of Europe's most convinced attacking sides, notorious at times for their neglect at the back, often admired for their offensive flair; in fact, Eintracht are Germany's highest-scoring side. Yet what happened in Frankfurt ? So scared were they of any possible defensive slip, of West Ham scoring an away goal, that they started the match off as if they were playing an away game—with the result that Graham Paddon, almost against West Ham's own expectations, scored within eight minutes. Had Eintracht played their normal game, West Ham probably wouldn't have got near their penalty area in the opening minutes. Well, after the very catastrophe had happened which their tactics had been designed to avoid, Eintracht had to change their tune—but they didn't have the instruments for the purpose: playing at home, they had only lined up two recognised strikers, Bernd Holzenbein and Rudiger Wenzel, in what amounted to a 4-4-2 formation.
Time was when a mere two up front were regarded as too cautious an approach even in dangerous away games, but here we had a home side de-characterising itself under the threat of an away goal, which duly happened: fear is a well-tried, creative prophet. And when Eintracht did come to score their two goals, it was their sweeper (Willi Neuberger) and a midfield player (Wolfgang Kraus) who struck ; in fact, in the entire twoleg tie, .which brought seven goals, only one —Keith Robson's last week—was scored by a striker.
This was because, believe it or not, West Ham, likewise, confined themselves to two strikers in their own home game—Billy Jennings and Keith Robson—though admittedly they had the half-fit Alan Taylor lined up in the wings, just in case.
You may say that there was nothing wrong with the two goals by the masterly Trevor Brooking, one of which was indeed a classic, and that West Ham did not win the tie through defensive play. For one thing, however. Eintracht would have won their home leg more handsomely without those heavy defensive precautions—so that West Ham, in their turn, would have had to look for more goals; and for another, there was distinctive defensive anxiety even in West Ham's more aggressive periods—so that, for instance, when they took a corner kick, their chief concern seems to have been : what would happen if Eintracht were to break ?
My submission is that the away-goal rule is both stupid and artificial, and therefore tends to destroy or, at the very least, inhibit the creative side of the game. It is stupid because its inventors thought of its likely effect on away sides without giving any thought to its likely effect on home sides. As a result, even though away sides may, at times, play more offensively, there is, in fob, far more defensive play now than there was before the anti-defensive rule was introduced.
It is artificial because at crucial junctures it upsets the very structure of the game, whose central purpose is the scoring of goals. Logically, therefore, a goal should be a goal—whereas now, in certain circumstances, it suddenly is two goals, or it might be two goals: you don't know until it's all over, and you are meanwhile playing in the dark.
When West Ham eventually scored last week, they hadn't equalised; they had, for the moment, won. Having been one down, they suddenly were one up: an utterly irrational course of events, especially from the point of view of the suffering side who, having got in front, find themselves potentially behind without the intermediate stage of equalisation. Later, when West Ham were 3-1 up (4-3 on aggregate), irrationality was reversed : in the dying seconds, they faced the possibility of being knocked out of the Cup without their opponents having to equalise first. The fundamental threat to the total structure of a game is that at many a given point, you don't know the value of a goal you are scoring, or a goal you are giving away; it receives its value, its decisive significance retrospectively.
In the 1970 World Cup, especially in their game against Czechoslovakia, the Brazilians showed that their inspired attacking flair drew an enormous amount of energy from their psychological capacity to ignore a goal scored against them and go on as if nothing had happened. That attitude is realistic: for a well-balanced, inventive attacking side, a single goal need not be more than a minor accident, a point lost in a game in which one's own points are the central preoccupation. But once that goal may count for two, once the principle of blow and counter-blow (equalisation) is abolished in certain circumstances, attacking flair must needs be replaced by defensive fear.
It was the Brazilians who introduced us to 4-2-4, and whom we introduced to the more defensive 4-3-3. If 4-4-2 is confined to away attitudes, it is sad but tolerable; but if home sides, normally positive, adopt this negative formation, football as a game of extended constructiveness is in danger.
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