How much cash would he have if he went to Italy? Their club football isn't what it was back in the late 80s and early 90s. Obviously Inter and Juve have had some European success lately but I would have thought he would have to go stay in Spain or go to Germany or England if he wanted to win the big one.

I think he put all his CL eggs in the Atletico basket, and rightfully so imo. He might have other priorities now and he always said he will go back to Inter one day, he is very loved there, the city is awesome etc. The only club he could have coached in England was probably Chelsea. I doubt Bayern ever wanted him and neither Barca/RM. I think it's either Inter/Argentina NT for him, if he decides to leave.

ReLÖL MADRID. Did they DARE travel back to CELEBRATE after a pathetic win like this?

Been mentioned in the USMNT soccer thread that we should offer Simeone the keys to the bank/city/treasury department, which i agree with, but will never happen.

what about the old mls way?

Not for me, I hate shootouts where people dribble from the 35, they lead to broken noses and boring goals, they work in hockey but not soccer.

But best-out-of-five from the 12 is almost as stupid. How could anything be worse than a system where one of the only major factors is whether the keeper GUESSES correctly???? I don't know how far out the shots should be--shoot from however far out that a full-on guessed commitment to a side is the wrong strategy. Shading to a side is fine, it leads to a much more interesting game of chicken. But right now the keepers are just trying to be as big as possible and essentially take a bullet for President Lincoln, it's so screwed up. Let the keepers be athletes. Let the shooters shoot anywhere they want to shoot from along the 18. Or maybe it's anywhere along the D. I'm not sure: make them shoot from however far away it takes to make the conversion rates drop from 80% to 40%. Or at least 50%. The point is to make the best soccer players in the world make a soccer play instead of a rock paper scissors play.

This would reward good shooters for legit sick shots and good keepers for legit sick saves. It's going to generate some legendary keeper mistakes. With today's pens from the 12 almost 100% of the pressure is on the shooter, which is bona fide idiotic. It's so much better if the pressure is on both of them, god knows there's plenty to go round. Note that here are still going to be a bunch of hilarious shooter fails too, there will actually be more of them.

If you were going to watch a barca practice right now, would you rather watch them have a contest from the 20 or the 12??? The stuff that happens when pros take direct shots from a little distance is much much much more interesting and dazzling than pros taking pens. And besides being more fun it's also more fair in that teams with better players are more likely to win. Which means it gives chelsea united a little less incentive to park the bus for an hour because they have a better chance winning at powerball than soccer.

THere's a reason NBA all-star week doesn't include a free-throw shooting contest. How much more exciting is the end of the final yesterday if Cronaldo thunderbolts that into the upper window past Oblak's fingertips? Or better yet tries to chip him in a dainty way and Oblak smirks and scorpion kicks it to alaska? I've been making this argument for twenty years and I'd legit love to hear counterarguments. I'm sure there must be decent counterargumets that don't include the word "tradition".

PS I'd keep pens at the 12 for regular in-game fouls. I'm only talking about what to do at the end of overtime

Would like to see a penalty shoot out where each team nominates 1 player to take them all instead of alternating.

Penalties have to be in a vacuum relatively easy for the taker.

What makes them goat is that the difficulty all comes from the pressure.

If you put pressure on both striker and keeper then you dilute pressure as a total decider and add in too much skill.

The ease of the task makes it all about mental strength and that is what makes championship deciding PKs an absolutely epic and compelling spectacle of sporting theatre.

Fully understandable that Yanks dont understand something that involves application of and appreciation of the mind.

Bull****. It's just a random number generator.

I'm open to shootout improvements, don't really like just moving the spot back though. Would rather see them trade breakaways

I think the most important thing is something to counter the advantage of winning the toss. Right now I believe it's a 60-40 advantage or something ridiculous like that to go first.

Could do it like tennis tiebreakers

at least do it like kickoffs. one can decide to go first and then the other gets to decide which half to use. yesterday madrid both went first and got to kick in front of their own fans.

1 v 1 to replace pens imo.

This a fair point I was convinced Real would win when they got to go first.

I dont think theres a big enough sample out there in this universe about similarly skilled teams doing pen shoutouts in similar conditions for all the glory to really prove this 60-40 split, especially in the last few years.

we don't really need that though, we have a ton of data, 60-40 is a huge gap

whats that data tho? shootouts of serbian 3rd divison games from 40 years back?

how many CL final shootouts did we have the last 10 seasons?

are we sure the kids today dont have better mental education than 10 years before so we should most likely only take the last 3 seasons?

and the variance is probably absurd as well

I looked up one random study from 2006 "Kicks from the penalty mark in soccer: the roles of stress, skill, and fatigue for kick outcomes." with extremely detailed analysis when to let your best player kick etc etc and it says:

"Data were collected from soccer statistics internet sites on all 41 penalty shootouts and 409 kicks taken in the World Cup, European Championships, and Copa America between 1976 and 2004."

do you really think these data are a) a big enough sample and b) comparable with yesterdays game?

Mental education? Sure loads of childen see therapists these days as default but not sure it has improved their penalty taking skills.

Penalties ruin extra time, play until someone scores or dies from exhaustion against Atletico.

Edit: Anyway I love a penalty shootout, maybe increase to best of 7.

kids these day in those footballing bootcamps get PR-coaching, mental coaching, diet coaching from age 5 on. I dont think this was the case in 1956.
The study I just read and quoted actually suggests the younger the player the better penalties he takes/converts more.

Sure but unlike a diet plan mental coaching may be a thing but can't guarantee anything like changing someone's diet. As for the 60-40 thing, brief search brought up nothing but if true then best of 6, toss winners get to decide which three they take first, something like that. A penalty shootout doesn't have to be from 5 attempts.

How so?

If the penalty taker uses fairly standard technique that anyone of that level is well capable of, even the donkiest centre back, then the kick is un savable regardless of what the keeper does.

So the only variable elements are mental pressures that make a trained athlete choke a technique that is pretty easy.

Juanfran hit it with his ankle, so bad

You just explained how it's a random number generator. It's a Bernoulli trial with probability p = .9 of success (I made the number up, though I'm sure it's known and varies a wee bit from player to player, but probably all teams have 5 guys with p > .85).

They do it instead of simply flipping a coin because it makes for better spectacle.