Encouraging Recreational Soccer Match Parity

The league where we play recreational soccer doesn't keep standings until U9. At that point, official scores and standings are maintained by the league. Parity is highly encouraged by our league. One way they do this that the official goal differential for any match is limited to 3 goals. In other words, the winning team will never have more than a 3 goal lead for any game in the official standings.

Now your place in the standings does matter because it is the top 3 teams in the bracket who receive trophies. Often one of these positions will come down to a tie breaker. Head-to-Head is the first tie-breaker which is clearly good, but after that are goal-differential and goals-allowed.

Goal-differential is actually good because it is independent of the number of goals the opposing team scored so long as the difference is 3 or more. In other words, the better team if they are several goals up, can play in such a way that the other team may score some goals and still not make the goal differential less than 3.

Goals allowed, on the other hand, discourages the better team from allowing the other team to score any goals at all. A shutout is the best possible outcome from a tie-breaker standpoint. To top it off, if the goals allowed are equal, they actually use the number of shutouts as the next criteria.

Standings based on points (3 for win, etc), then head-to-head, then goal differential are excellent tie breakers, but in just the two and a half years I've coached since the girls turned U9, I've seen trophies come down to the goals-allowed tie breaker. It does happen, particularly in a 3-way tie. And having goals-allowed as a tie breaker will influence how "generous" a coach will be in those mismatches that will occur during the season.

Recreational league tie-breakers should not include goals-allowed or shutouts. Instead, base the final standings on fewest cautions during the season or a playoff shootout or something like that. Make it based on good sportsmanship or at least something fun rather than how well you kept the weaker teams out of the goal.