By Mike Collett
BUDAPEST (Reuters) – FIFA President Sepp Blatter has called on Germany’s World Cup winner Franz Beckenbauer and his panel of soccer experts to try to come up with an alternative to penalty shootouts to settle drawn matches.
Blatter was speaking to delegates at the FIFA Congress on Friday less than a week after Chelsea beat Bayern Munich on penalties to win the Champions League final.
“Football can be a tragedy when you go to penalty kicks. Football is a team game, when it goes to one against one football loses its essence,” Blatter said.
“Perhaps Franz Beckenbauer, with his Football 2014 group, can show us a solution, perhaps not today but in the future.”
Beckenbauer, who won the World Cup with Germany as both a player and manager was among the delegates at the congress, was not immediately available for comment but his views are well known on the matter.
The German has said he would rather have penalties than either a golden or silver goal which were used briefly to determine matches.
Blatter has been calling for reforms to the game for a while and this is not the first time he has said he wanted to see penalty shootouts replaced.
But the fact he made the comment in his speech to delegates underlines his desire for the Football Committee to take some action on the issue.
Dozens of high profile finals, including the 1994 and 2006 World Cup finals, European Championships and Champions League finals have all been decided on penalties since they were introduced in their modern format in 1970.