I think that goal average must be considered in direct matches instead of global goal difference in national leagues. It has no sense that you could won both matches to a team, and then this team wins the National League with same points than yours because of better global goal difference. For example, Spanish League this season (62): Real Madrid won both matches against Sevilla, but lost the competition because of worst goal difference. It could be a future improvement…

Kind regards.

Roberto.

Thanks for the suggestion, Roberto! We have the ability to have different tie break rules for each country so we could mimic real life rules. At the moment all countries (except Brazil) follow this rule: goals difference, goals for, number of wins. Brazil has number of wins as first criterion, as in real life.

We are still uncertain on how much we should follow real life rules and try to keep up with them and how much we should have our own global rules to make all countries balanced. Currently I’m leaning towards having our own global rules. I know some leagues in real life have direct matches as their first criterion to break ties, and it definitely sounds more exciting.

Let’s see if anyone else would like to voice their opinions about this topic.

I disagree, it should stay as it is in real life, you win the league (in most country’s) by being the best over the whole season. Two games against second place shouldn’t matter.

Agree to Joseppi – we should mimic real life here

I admit I’m biased though – already won a league in Brazil due to the ridiculous rule that # of victories is more relevant than goals difference… :-)

I also agree that in this case it’s logical to mimic real life. Every tiebreak rule is debatable, might as well follow real life.

Thanks for the opinions, guys. Do you know if the current rules are not in line with real life rules for any of the countries? The only rules we have allowed for are things related to what you see in the league table, we have not implemented direct confrontation or number of cards rules at all.

Do you use these tiebreak rules for the Champions League?

7.01
If two or more teams are equal on points on completion of the group matches,
the following criteria are applied in the order given to determine their rankings:
a.
higher number of points obtained in the group matches played among the
teams in question;
b.
superior goal difference from the group matches played among the teams in
question;
c.
higher number of goals scored in the group matches played among the teams
in question;
d.
higher number of goals scored away from home in the group matches played
among the teams in question;

By the way, in the Dutch league, if points, goals scored and goals against are the same, the teams are ranked in alphabetical order….

Thanks for your comments. What I proposed is how it works in Spain (when tie is between two teams): points in direct match, goals in direct match (no double value), global goal difference (and then, yellow and red cards decide). When 3 or more teams are tied, Champions League rules apply. By the end, when all is tied, a draw with a coin decides winner!!!

@Dimitri:
Champions League follows the same rules as the national leagues, goals difference, goals scored and number of wins.

Alphabetical order?! If that’s what it is we can change that later :-)

@Roberto:
That’s fair enough, we can give it a shot to implement that as first criteria for Spain if that’s what’s used in real life