Shoot Down the Shootout

Tea: Marron Glacé

Music: Bob Dylan, "Mr. Tambourine Man"

Time: Night.

After today's UEFA Champions League final, I'd just like to take a brief moment to say one thing:

I hate penalty kick shootouts. Loathe them.

We don't decide Super Bowls by letting kickers alternate field goal attempts, Stanley Cups with best-of-five faceoffs or the World Series with a home run derby. (I'm not doing the usual basketball analogy. It's been done to death.) So why do we decide soccer championships (if regulation and a 30-minute overtime doesn't settle things) with penalty kicks?

It's anticlimactic. It's artificial. And it's avoidable.

Look, by that time both teams are exhausted. Someone's bound to make a mistake and give up a goal -- at the very least, an honest penalty kick.

Let the TV people howl. The only honorable way to settle a tie in a soccer championship is to go through the regulation 30-minute overtime -- and if things are still knotted up, go to 15-minute golden goal periods until someone puts the ball in the net.

Then -- and only then -- let the celebrations begin. That's how it used to be, and how it should be again.

Here endeth the rant. Now let's see if anyone at FIFA cares.

(Insert wry chuckle here.)

Yeah, right ...