February 20 – As Japan’s J1 League’s 2026 begins the transition to aligning its football calendar with the rest of the world, it is tinkering with one of football’s oldest results, the draw.
During this season, matches will no longer end level. If scores are tied after 90 minutes, the game will move straight to a penalty shootout to decide a winner.
Three points will still be awarded for a regulation win, zero for a regulation loss. Shootout victories will see two points for the winner and one for the loser. The draw, the result that sometimes felt like a win, or a loss depending on which side of the result you sat, is gone, albeit temporarily.
The rule applies only to the short February-to-June 2026 season, a bridge as Japan shifts its calendar to align with Europe’s August-to-May model. For now, league officials insist it is an experiment. Yet experiments in football sometimes become permanent fixtures.
Supporters of the move argue it injects urgency and consequence into every fixture. No more settling for a point. No more managing the final 10 minutes. Every matchday must end decisively.
On the other side of the fence, is that football has always made space for the draw. What beats grinding out a draw on the road, or a heroic rear guard with 10-men. Removing it risks turning matches into manufactured drama rather than earned outcomes. A penalty shootout, thrilling as it can be, is still a lottery.
There’s also historical precedent across the Pacific. From the 70’s to the mid 90’s, US soccer attempted to ‘fix’ draws with hockey-style shootouts, where players dribbled in from distance to beat the goalkeeper. The idea was to appeal to American tastes and ensure every game had a winner. It didn’t last. Fans rejected it, purists choked on their donuts, and the sport eventually reverted to global norms.
Whether fans embrace that trade-off will decide if this experiment ends quietly or becomes a blueprint others are tempted to follow.
One by-product that is quietly being whispered is that the national team will benefit. In two of the last four World Cups, the Samurai Blue have departed after failures from 12-yards out. Perhaps practice will make semi-permanent.
Contact the writer of this story at nick.webster@insideworldfootball.com
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