KLUpod Final Round: A Decade of K League Rule Changes

The previous episode, the first of this final round series, we looked at the AFC Champions League in time for the competition returning for this season.

But we looked at what's changed over the years.

And there's a theme here with this episode, because there's been quite a lot of rule changes, Matthew, over the years, even just since we have been involved or watching the K League.

Now, obviously, I think probably one of the most impactful rule changes is And quite a unique one in a sense, because not all the leagues do this, but it's the goal scored as being the first tiebreaker, which, well, you've written quite a few articles about this as well at the moment on our site.

But this one is, I think, probably the most interesting anyway.

Yeah, I thought, well, we wanted to kind of just go back and see what kind of rules worked and what kind of rules didn't and what makes K League unique and interesting.

But this one was one I remember quite fondly because it was the year I started writing about K League.

And I remember it being a point of contention many years.

Many of those apps weren't picking up on the change.

But yes, in K League from 2016, K League began prioritising goals scored, goals for, over goal difference.

And this was as a result from a couple of... had years really for K League in front of goal K League in 2014 was averaging just 2.22 goals a game and that was Only marginally better in 2015, 2.39.

But those two figures out of 10 leagues surveyed, which include J League, Chinese Super League, V League, Thai Premier League, and then for good measure, EPL, La Liga, Bundesliga, Scottish Premier League, MLS, was the lowest two years.

over what was...

Well, I actually did eight years of research there between 2012 to 2019.

Those two years were the lowest, and they were both in K League.

And it was a real nadir in terms of how bad things had got.

Teams were just not... uh moving forward they didn't seem to to be finding a way in front of goal and uh settling for one nils um interestingly less than 50 percent of matches only 38.16 percent of matches in 2014 actually had three goals or more uh It was a real low point in K League.

And I don't know whether you saw, because you were watching Dejan at this time.

It wasn't a great year, a stellar year, 2015 for Dejan.

But surely you can recall a couple of, well, the kind of feeling of watching a game in those periods.

I can recall some high-scoring games against Dejan in that time,

but that's

nothing to do with, you know, the rule at the time, but

yeah, you see all this, this, um, I actually, to be honest with you, I didn't, this whole rule change through, through under my, under my radar in 2016.

I didn't, I don't think I knew at the time that this was a new thing.