When Reinhold Yabo slid the ball beneath René Adler in the 78th minute of the Bundesliga play-off second leg last Monday night to put Karlsruher SC 2-1 up on aggregate, nothing had essentially changed.

From the very first minute, Hamburg had needed to score in order to remain the only original Bundesliga founder member never to have been relegated, or else finally bow out of the top division following a 1-1 draw at home in the first leg. Now, with ten minutes remaining, their task remained the same; one goal, which they got in dramatic fashion courtesy of a Marcelo Diaz free-kick in injury time.

Whether the free-kick should have been given at all has been the subject of heated debate, the general consensus being that referee Manuel Gräfe got it wrong. Regardless, 180 minutes of play-off tension had produced two 1-1 draws, leaving the tie level. Extra time. Great. So far so good.

Rewind 12 months, and Hamburg are once again fighting to maintain their Bundesliga status, this time away at 2nd division surprise package Greuther Fürth. Once again, the two sides are level after 180 minutes following a 0-0 draw in Hamburg and a 1-1 draw in northern Bavaria. But this time that’s it. No extra-time. Hamburg survive because their goal happened to come away from home.

Back to last Monday, and we’re into the second period of extra time when Nicolai Müller prods the ball home at the back post to give Hamburg the lead with five minutes to play. Five minutes in which Karlsruhe would now need to score twice just because Müller’s goal had happened to come away from home.

The away goals rule also rendered René Adler’s last minute penalty save to keep the score at 2-3 on aggregate irrelevant. 3-3 would not have been enough for Karlsruhe.

Despite the unfair weighting of goals over the past couple of Bundesliga relegation/promotion play-offs, and the ultimately disastrous consequences for Greuther Fürth and Karlsruher SC, the away goal rule was originally introduced by UEFA in 1965 with admirable and honest intentions.

European and international club football was still in its infancy. Travel between countries was not as quick, easy or comfortable and for many players, an away match in a foreign country often constituted their first ever trip abroad and their first experience of a foreign culture.

A combination of exhausting trips, often involving two flights to allow for re-fuelling or long bus journeys over land, significant culture shocks and vastly different climates resulted in many a high-scoring victory for the home side.

Indeed, the travelling team would often aim purely to defend and keep the score down, safe in the knowledge that they would have the chance to rack up their own high score in the return leg when the conditions were reversed. The promise of an away goal which counted double encouraged away teams to come out of their shell, allowing for more open, two-sided encounters over both legs.

The system worked. Teams who had travelled for over a day just to reach the field of play were compensated for their strenuous efforts by the reward of a goal which carried added importance.

Today however, the conditions which made the introduction of the away goals rule so necessary no longer exist. Flights to European away ties rarely entail any longer than three hours in relative luxury in first class. The modern professional footballer is well-travelled and unlikely to be put off by extreme heat or cold. Indeed, the majority of top teams include a substantial number of foreign players for whom an away game may involve a return to their home country, or at least a return to a more familiar climate and culture.

What’s more, the actual training and footballing conditions rarely change any more. Whether a Champions League match takes in England, Portugal, Germany or Russia, it almost certainly takes place in an ultra-modern stadium with the latest top level training and conditioning facilities.

The pitches are all treated to the same high standards, the dressing rooms and hotels are the same, even the tactics of the opposition are unlikely to represent anything unknown. In 2015, under these conditions, there is no need for a goal scored away from home to carry more weight.

In fact, the continued implementation of the rule now has the opposite effect on ties. Whereas it originally encouraged genuinely disadvantaged away teams to attack and try and score, it now obliges the home team to be ultra-defensive, to play extra safe out of fear of conceding an away goal. After all, it is more advantageous to draw 0-0 at home than 1-1 or 2-2.

The rule is particularly unfair when the second leg goes into extra-time. Here, the away team benefits from an extra 30 minutes in which a goal for them is worth double that of a goal scored by the hosts.

One argument of course, and a step in the right direction, would be to remove the away goal in extra time. If this were the case, Nicolai Müller’s strike in the 115th minute last Monday would not have been the absolute death knell for Karlsruhe. Rouwen Hennings’ late penalty would certainly have taken on added significance.

If the case for the away goal rule in international competition is becoming less and less convincing, its use in domestic competition, where the original requisite conditions have never existed, is surely untenable. Just ask Greuther Fürth and Karlsruher SC.

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