“There are those who dispute, who claim and who protest, I only make one gesture, I turn my jacket around.
Always on the good side”.
For this paper, we had no choice but to call on the great Jacques Dutronc and his ode to the reversal of the jacket.
Because yes, it didn't take long for us to change our minds on the removal of the away-goal-that-counts-double-but-not-quite-rule.
A match in fact, that of Tuesday, enjoyable as possible, between Manchester City and Real Madrid.
Seven goals, a crazy script to make you pass Michael Bay for a telenovela screenwriter, twists and turns, tension and rhythm, rhythm and more rhythm.
However, would it have been different if article 20 of the UEFA regulations, tested in 1965 in the Cup Winners' Cup and generalized to all European competitions four years later, had remained in force?
Probably not.
Many of us were skeptical about the removal of the away goal rule.
It is a real success.
There are no more calculations, from the outward journey.
The best team wins.
Point bar.
— Bruno Constant (@Bruno_Constant) April 26, 2022
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No more calculation and reluctance, we play, we play, we play
However, conservatives that we are, what did we not say when UEFA announced this little revolution in June?!
“They are stealing our football, these motherfuckers!
“, “it's the end of an era”, “it was better before” and other clichés of old refractory idiots at the slightest change.
“There is no one more blind than he who does not want to see,” said a certain bearded man from Nazareth.
And he wasn't wrong, the bastard.
We thought the crazy dramaturgy of the return matches dead and buried, we realized that the first legs also had the right to their quarter of an hour of fame.
All without taking anything away from the madness of the second rounds, as evidenced by the formidable double confrontation (1-3, 3-2) between Chelsea and Real in the previous round.
Rendered obsolete by the pandemic, relocated matches and behind closed doors – which, as we have seen, have favored away teams for the past two years – this rule was finally repealed when the stadiums found their public. .
But the goal was elsewhere, as UEFA boss Aleksander Ceferin explained: "Today the effects of this rule are contrary to its original purpose, as it deters the home team - especially of the first leg – to attack, for fear of conceding a goal which would give his opponent a crucial advantage.
»
The coaches approve, the nostalgics realize
If we will always find exceptions – at random PSG which stuck four to Barça in the first leg at the Parc des Princes in 2017 – it is true that this rule did not really push the teams receiving in the first leg to take excessive risks and to attack.
But what is football if not a sport where the team must score one more goal than its opponent to win?
"As far as I'm concerned, when I played at home, I kept telling myself not to take a goal," even admitted Sir Alex Ferguson, yet not known for his offensive reluctance.
Since the mid-1970s, there has been a clear trend towards a reduction in the gap between home and away wins (from 61%-19% to 47%-30%) and the number of goals per match home and away (from 2.02-0.95 to 1.58-1.15) in men's competitions.
— UEFA 🇫🇷 (@UEFAcom_fr) June 24, 2021
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Besides, if men lie, don't figure them out.
And what do they tell us?
That the average number of goals scored at home in Champions League knockout games fell from 2.03 to 1.55 between the 1960s and 2010s, according to an in-depth study by the BBC.
CQFD
If the romantics took out pitchforks and lanterns when the announcement of the abolition of this rule, the actors did not even shed a tear.
From Tuchel to Emery via Gasperini, Ancelotti or Guardiola, most coaches have been dreaming for a while that this rule passes the weapon to the left.
In September 2018, already, they had made it known at the twentieth forum of coaches of elite clubs, in vain.
They finally prevailed and the first results seem to prove them entirely right.
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