How Germany and Austria caused final games to be played at the same time

You might be wondering why the final games in a group are played at the same time? It is all due to a game played between West Germany and Austria at the 1982 World Cup.
The way the groups are set up one could start using the order in which the games are played as a tactical advantage. In that specific case, the four nations in the group were: Algeria, Chile, West Germany and Austria. The question was who would move on and who wouldn’t. With only one game left the options were as follows:
A draw or an Austrian win would send Austria and Algeria on, a German win by three or more goals would send West Germany and Algeria on, and a German win by one or two goals would send Austria and Germany on.
What happened was that after a West German goal by Horst Hrubesch in the first half both teams seemed to be happy with the mutually beneficial score and kind of settled, waiting for the game time to be over or maybe they didn’t, watch the game for yourself in the video below.

Algeria protested, but Austria and Germany denied that they were just waiting for time to run out. The international Federation let the results stand, but decided that in all subsequent World Cups the final games of the group stage have to be played at the same time.

Watch the game here:

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.