The December 23 of 1970 the match valid for the first round of the German Cup was played between Schalke 04 and Wolfsburg, which went down in history for being the first match decided by penalty kicks. In fact, in the event of a draw at the end of extra time, no spot kicks were scheduled before this date. If it was a final, the match was repeated again, in case of a new tied result or for all the previous elimination rounds, it was fate that decided the winning team through the toss of a coin. An undiplomatic method that rewarded several teams (includingItaly), on multiple occasions.
How the regulation worked before and after Karl Wald
As already mentioned, FIFA (and consequently UEFA) did not foresee that a knockout match would be decided by the penalty kicks. Although it is difficult for those who follow football today to imagine these scenarios, before 1970 the public was used to seeing their own or the other team rewarded with a lucky coin toss.
The man who probably marked this small revolution in football was Karl Waldex referee German. It was his idea, in fact, to replace the unpredictability of chance with a more meritocratic choice such as that of shots from 11 meters. Contrary to what you might think, there were some resistances to this change. But the ever-increasing controversies due to “random” defeats (like that of Israel for the elimination from the Olympic Games of 1968) however, led to the inevitable regulatory change in 1970.
If we analyze in more depth the rules that characterized the shift transitions of the various international competitions over time, we realize that there have been many adjustments aimed at making them the most balanced And right possible. Let’s think, for example, of golden goal which attributed the success to the first team capable of scoring a goal in extra time, or to silver goal which, instead, handed the victory to the winning team at the end of the first extra half. Another system recently repealed by UEFA provided, in the event of a tie in the 90′ of the direct elimination rounds of a competition (excluding the final), that if a team scored more away goals compared to the other, this one would have had the right to go through.
Famous examples: Italy-USSR 1968
In history, we remember several episodes in which the outcome of an important football match was left to chance, but the most famous are certainly two.
The first refers to the World Cup qualifying match of 1954 Between Spain And Türkiye. The two squads had respectively collected a victory each and a 2-2 result during the play-off held in Rome, which is why we opted for a drawin this case not with a coin, but with two slips of paper. An Italian boy was called to fish, Franco Gemmawho by extracting the name of Türkiye, decreed the definitive elimination of the Spaniards.
The second case concerns us very closely since it contributed, and not a little, to the victory ofEuropean of 1968 by the Italian national team. In fact, we are talking about the semi-final of the tournament between Italy And USSRwhich ended with a clean sheet in regulation time and was won by the Azzurri thanks to the toss of a five Swiss franc coin by the referee Tschenscher. According to the testimony of the then captain Facchettithe procedure was even repeated twice, given that on the first attempt the coin stopped vertically between the cracks in the changing room floor.
