Mindless Pedantry

I am, I must admit, somewhat perturbed by this. I had always assumed that when football commentators told us that 'away goals count double' they were simply being ill informed and inarticulate - as usual. No! No! No! I would think: they say that away goals in home-and-away games count double in the event of a tie, but what they really mean to say is that the team with the most away goals wins the tiebreaker.

That is why the result would be reported as (and these are all real examples, the first four results of a google search for "win on away goals rule"):

- Shelbourne 0 KR Reykjavik 0 (2-2 agg, Shebourne win on away goals).

- Arsenal 2 Wigan Athletic 1 (aet; 2-2 on aggregate; Wigan win on away goals rule).

- 02-04/05/08: Mauritania 2-2 Guinea 16-18/05/08: Guinea 1-1 Mauritania (3-3 on aggregate, Guinea win on away goals rule).

- Bayern Munich bt Real Madrid 2-1 (4-4 on aggregate, Bayern Munich win on away goals rule).

If away goals 'counted double', Bayern Munich would have beaten Real Madrid 6-4, seeing as they had scored more away goals, which count double, and thus decide the tie for them. And this would be ridiculous. No, what commentators mean to say is that the team with the most away goals wins in the event of a tie. Simple as, right?

Apparently not. My apologies to John Motson, George Hamilton, Barry Davies, Jonathan Pearce, Clive Tyldesley, and fuck it, Tony Gubba too. Apparently our esteemed cliché-merchants are, in this case, correct. That being admitted, there seems to be huge confusion as to what this actually means.

(For those of you who are still reading, I'll freely plead guilty to the charge of pedantry.)

If you peruse the Official FIFA Laws of the Game, you will find the following paragraph (p.50):

Away Goals
Competition rules may provide that where teams play each other home and away, if the aggregated scores are equal after the second match, any goals scored at the ground of the opposing team will count double.

As you may have guessed, I find this very surprising. Seriously, away goals do count double? Really? First of all, lets consider just how arbitrary this is - away goals count double? Why not triple? Why didn't FIFA go all out and declare that away goals count ten times an ordinary goal? Fuck it, why not go big? Perhaps for Champions League semi finals they could count as one hundred times more valuable than a regular goal.

The odd thing about the wording of this rule is that it does not specifically apply to the team with the quantitative advantage in terms of away goals. It refers to all away goals scored, by both sides, in both legs of the tie. So, to return to an example from earlier, the Real Madrid-Bayern Munich game did not actually finish 4-4 on aggregate; officially, the score was 6-5 to Bayern. Or, in the case of the Guinea-Mauritania game, the aggregate score was actually 5-4 to Guinea.

This being the case, why don't players get credited with two goals for strikes in these games? Unlike penalty shootouts, which are outside the realm of a regular game and purely there as a means of breaking a tie, the rule quoted above is quite clear on the matter: away goals 'count double'.

If nothing else, the reporting of these games seems to be ridiculously confused. Almost as confused as I am. Being so attuned to cynicism, it was my natural reaction to assume that our beloved football commentators were merely living up to my worst expectations of them; mangling words and concepts, peddling hackneyed guff to fill air. Apparently not.

Yikes. Pedantry doesn't pay, kids.