00:00The American lined up for the penalty shootout, but as he just dribbled the ball towards the
00:04keeper and then kicked it past him, the rest of the football world looked on in confusion.
00:09Because this isn't what a penalty shootout in football looks like. A penalty shootout is taken
00:14from the penalty spot, and you can't just dribble it towards the goal. So what was this? Well,
00:20this was the 35-yard, 5-second penalty shootout, one of the many American efforts to fix the world
00:26game. See, when soccer started gaining popularity in the U.S. through the 60s and 70s, the Americans
00:32wanted their games to be higher scoring, and they absolutely hated games ending in a tie. So they
00:38actually tried a bunch of changes, including making the goals bigger, adding 35-yard off sidelines so
00:44attackers could camp closer to the goal, and even breaking ties by giving points to the team who
00:49would receive the most corner kicks throughout a game. And despite receiving some pushback at the
00:53time, the North American Soccer League commissioner, Phil Woosnam, was confident in their Americanization
00:58of the sport, assuring everyone that eventually the rest of the world would come over to the American
01:04way of doing things. But while most of the changes they made were seen as absurd and blasphemous by
01:10football purists and FIFA themselves, the 35-yard penalty shootout was one change that actually
01:16kind of made sense. The 35-yard shootout felt much more expressive and skillful. Players had five
01:22seconds to get the ball past the keeper however they could, and keepers could come off their line
01:27and close down a player just as they would in regular play. And if a keeper fouled a player during
01:32a penalty shootout, the fans would get treated to both types of penalties. However, eventually,
01:37the changes grew tiresome for American fans who just wanted to enjoy the same game everyone else
01:42around the world was enjoying. And so, perhaps for the first time in history, the Americans eventually
01:48conformed to the rest of the world's way of doing things.
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