UEFA Scraps Away Goals Rule Starting From Next Season

UEFA have announced through an official statement that the away goals rule will be abolished in all of their club competitions from the 2021/22 campaign.

The European football governing body’s president, Aleksander Ceferin, indicated that the aforementioned rule has been a subject of debate in UEFA meetings in recent times.

“The away goals rule has been an intrinsic part of UEFA competitions since it was introduced in 1965,” said Ceferin in a statement posted on UEFA’s official website.

“However, the question of its abolition has been debated at various UEFA meetings over the last few years.

“Although there was no unanimity of views, many coaches, fans and other football stakeholders have questioned its fairness and have expressed a preference for the rule to be abolished.”

UEFA explained that if the same number of goals are scored by the two sides throughout a tie, the return leg will go to extra time.

“With the decision to remove this rule, ties in which the two teams score the same number of goals over the two legs would be not decided on the number of goals scored away, but two 15-minute periods of extra time are played at the end of the second leg and in case the teams score the same number of goals or no goals during this extra time, kicks from the penalty mark would determine the team which qualifies to the next stage of the competition,” read UEFA’s statement.

“Since away goals would no longer be given additional weight to decide a tie, they would also be removed from the criteria used to determine the rankings when two or more teams are equal on points in the group stage i.e. the criteria applied to matches played by the teams in question.

“They would not be removed from the additional criteria applied to all group matches if the teams remain equal (higher number of away goals scored in all group matches), in order to retain a maximum number of sporting criteria.

“Statistics from the mid-1970s until now show a clear trend of continuous reduction in the gap between the number of home/away wins (from 61 percent/19 percent to 47 percent/30 percent) and the average number of goals per match scored at home/away (from 2.02/0.95 to 1.58/1.15) in men’s competitions, whereas since 2009/10, the average goals per game have remained very steady in the UEFA Women’s Champions League with the overall average of 1.92 for home teams and 1.6 for away teams.”