Sepp Blatter has called on the Football Task Force 2014 to look at the possibility of changing the system of penalty shootouts to decide finals and knock-out games, with the head of FIFA calling the current situation a 'tragedy' and saying it takes the essence out of football.

Chelsea and Bayern Munich are the latest sides to end up in a high profile penalty shoot-out in Europe, with the sides coming to the last resort in this year's Champions League final.

The Blues were eventually victorious, but Blatter believes there must be a better way to decide which team is better than a one-on-one competition.

Sepp Blatter
Sepp Blatter believes there should be another alternative to penalty shoot-outs.

Franz Beckenbauer, the honourary president of the Football Task Force 2014, has received Blatter's requests as the group look at recommending rule changes to the game.

"Football can be a tragedy when you go to penalty kicks," Blatter said on the subject. "Football should not go to one to one, when it goes to penalty kicks football loses its essence.

"Perhaps Franz Beckenbauer with his football 2014 group can show us a solution perhaps not today but in the future."

With this in mind, IBTimes UK takes a look at five alternatives that FIFA could put in place should the penalty shoot-out go on the out.

1. Golden goal - used in sports such as field hockey, ice hockey and to some extent in rugby league, in the case of a golden goal the first team to score in extra time wins. The golden goal was a part of football for a time in the 1990s and 2000s, and a silver goal system was introduced between 2002-2004 whereby the leading team at the end of the first half of extra time would win, or the game would continue otherwise. The problem with the system was that teams may sit back and not attack for fear of leaving their defensive area open, and would rather go to the penalty shootout that resulted if no goals were scored as both options are equally risky.

2. Free kicks - Should a player have a free kick from just outside the box, for example, with a wall of players to come up against, it would make the situation a lot more difficult for a player to score in, and would resemble more of a football match in that it has a team defending rather than just one keeper. While it would show off the shooter's skills a lot more than being luck as is the case to some extent in penalties, it could present the problem of being too difficult to achieve, and would also be hard to work out where the best spot to take the free kick is.

Bayern Munich
Bayern Munich have suffered glory and disappointment at the hands of penalty shoot-outs this season.

3. Removing players for extra time - ice hockey has often experimented with taking players off the ice in extra time. While it works on a smaller pitch, fitness would become much more important at such a point of the game if this was introduced, with players having to cover a great deal more ground and the possibility of balls being lobbed up front much more often as opposed to being passed up with skill.

4. Combining cards, possession and other statistics to decide winner - Blatter seems to allude to the argument that the best team doesn't necessarily win in a penalty shoot-out, and the obvious solution would seem to be to map out exactly who the best team are according to what stats are available. But with this system, teams could sit back and hold possession to force a draw knowing that they'll win on statistics alone. And this, in turn, would surely make football more tedious to watch as a result.

5. Both teams play without goalkeepers in extra time - this is largely untried, though as with many of these possible scenarios, in ice hockey it does occasionally take place. With the NHL, in the event that a side are deperate for a goal, they'll replace the keeper with an attacker - in football, it could be that there are 11 men on the pitch without a keeper, or 10, and whether the keeper plays or not is irrelevant because he can't use his hands or be subjected to different rules than the other players. The excitement factor would still be present, and with the possibility of more goals a penalty shoot-out is much more unlikely, but Blatter's insistence that the 'essence' of the game remain would surely go against this concept.