A new wrinkle at the World Cup.

Soccer games have become boring. The object of the game is to avoid a mistake. Thus, the ball is passed by relatively small distances to the open man. The idea is to kick the ball in the air to the center of the field (about 5 yards inside of the box  where a Striker may get a shot at goal. A second scoring opportunity comes from corner kicks. The most sought after situation is for a Striker to get free in the penalty box and take a shot.

There has been a new development at the World Cup and it has to do with a winning strategy. It requires a very good goal keeper.

The strategy is to keep the score tied and decide the winner by a shoot out, i.e. penalty kicks. The goalie can flop left or right and may save one out of 5 kicks. But a second save can be made if the kicker aims the ball to the center of the net and the alert goalie kick the ball out while stretched out in the air. That is how Russia beat Spain and Croatia (Hrvatska) beat the Danes.