Sometimes, To Win, You Have to Play to Lose

http://nowiknow.com/ wrote:In 1994, twenty-one Caribbean nations gathered on the soccer pitch to play for the Shell Caribbean Cup.  Trinidad and Tobago would emerge victorious, beating — among many — Barbados along the way.  But the two countries would have never matched up but for, perhaps, the strangest soccer match ever played.
Barbados, Grenada, and Puerto Rico were grouped together in the qualifying round.  In the first two games, Grenada  beat Puerto Rico, 2-0 while Barbados lost to Puerto Rico, 1-0.   With Grenada and Barbados set to play, the potential outcomes were clear.  Grenada would advance with a win.  With goal differential being the tiebreaker, however, Barbados needed to do more than just win outright.  They needed to win by at least two goals; otherwise, Grenada would advance.  There were no ties in the qualifying round — instead, tie games went into sudden death overtime.

For some reason, the tournament organizers decided that overtime goals would be worth two points.  So when Barbados found themselves winning, 2-1, with less than ten minutes left, they had two choices: try and score a third goal — unlikely versus a lock-down Grenada defense; or intentionally score an own goal, tying the game at 2-2, and hoping for the best in overtime.  They went with the second strategy, as shown in this video.

With the game tied, 2-2, what was strange became stranger.  Grenada realized that a 3-2 win or a 3-2 loss would be equally effective, so they tried to score in either goal — Barbados’ or their own.  For five frantic minutes, Barbados defended both goals against the two-fronted Grenada assault.  Grenada failed, and Barbados netted the game-winner in overtime, winning 4-2, and advancing past the qualifying round.

Le Samourai wrote:The last part doesn't seem plausible at all. A loss and a win can never be the same. An own goal from Grenada would send Barbados through, since it would be worth 2 goals.

However, since this is a Caribbean, I could see it happening...not because it makes logical sense, but because Grenada's team might have been foolish enough to think scoring an own goal would help them, and Barbados, seeing this, might have been foolish enough to try to stop them.

McAgger wrote:It was before extra time so the own goal would count as only 1 goal. It was only in extra time that it would count as 2. Which makes it plausible.

The weirdest thing here is what Beatrix said about not being able to score an own goal. Your goalkeeper is still able to pick the ball up with his hands in your penalty area and move about where he likes in it so he could just walk into the goal with it.

CBarca wrote:How did they fail at scoring in either goal though? lol

What was hardest here was probably the reffing job, poor guys