ABBA penalty shootout system will ruin football
A new way of taking penalties is being tested and it's an unnecessary complication to the beautiful game.
We saw this at the European Under-17 Championship tournament earlier this year and at the Premier League Asia Trophy in the match between Leicester City and West Brom.
The new order of taking penalties is similar to that of a tennis tie-breaker and it is aimed at reducing the advantage that is said to be gained by the team that goes first, because the team that goes second continually has to catch up.
Under 'ABBA' rules, team A takes the opening penalty, with team B then taking the next two before team A repeats the same process, until all first five penalties are done and dusted.
If it's still a tie afterwards, team B gets sudden death underway and team A follows. If the scores are still deadlocked after the sixth penalty, then team A takes the seventh penalty first and so on until there is a winner.
This thing will over-complicate sport. If you won the toss you must choose what you want to do first and that is the way it has been done. It's always been ABABABABAB, not this ABBA thing which was designed by losers.
ABBA or no ABBA, you all have equal amounts of spot kicks, so what's the point? I hope FIFA scraps this thing before it kills the excitement of our lovely game. This is football, not tennis.