Two-legged tie

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In

• First leg: Team A 4–1 Team B
• Second leg: Team B 2–1 Team A

Then the aggregate score will be Team A 5–3 Team B, meaning team A wins the tie. In some competitions, a tie is considered to be drawn if each team wins one leg, regardless of the aggregate score. Two-legged ties can be used in knockout cup competitions and playoffs.

In North America, the equivalent term is home-and-away series or, if decided by aggregate, two-game total-goals series.

Use

In association football, two-legged ties are used in the later stages of many international club tournaments, including the

Other the seasons, Gaelic football, two-legged finals were used for five seasons of the National Football League, the last in 1988–89. The International Rules Series was also two-legged in 1998–2013 and from 2017 onward.

In Canadian football, two-legged total point series were occasionally used by the Canadian Football League and their predecessor leagues in the postseason, most recently in the 1986 playoffs.

In

Each team hosts one match, and there is no intended advantage to whether a team plays at home first or second. However, many managers and players believe that the team playing at home for the second leg has a slight advantage. The thinking is that the team playing away for the first leg can play it safe there (a draw or even a slight defeat is considered a favorable result), and then "win" the tie at home in the second leg (even away goals rule). Additionally, hosting the second match also gives an advantage as the hosting team may get to play extra-time or a penalty shootout in their home stadium if a tiebreak was needed.[2]

A statistical analysis of roughly 12,000 matches from the European club competitions between 1956 and 2007 showed that around 53% of teams playing at home in the second leg won the tie (even after allowing for the fact that team playing at home in the second leg tend to be better teams).^[3][4]

In the case of World Cup intercontinental playoffs, the team that plays the second leg at home has won 61% of ties.^[5]

In many competitions where two-legged ties involve seeded and unseeded teams, the seeded team are given home advantage in the second leg. For example, in the UEFA Champions League round of 16, the group winners play the second leg at home against the group runners-up. In both the UEFA Europa League and UEFA Europa Conference League knockout round play-offs, the group runners-up play the second leg at home against the higher competition's third-place team from the group stage while in the round of 16, the group winners play the second leg at home against these knockout round playoff winners.

Until the 2016 edition of the Copa do Brasil, in the first two rounds which were played as two-legged ties, if the away team won the first leg by two or more goals, they would progress straight to the next round without needing to play the second leg which they would play at home. However, the second leg would still have to be played if the home team won the first leg by two or more goals.

Alternatives

In knockout competitions, alternatives to two-legged ties include:

• single-leg ties,
  • either where one team has home advantage, as in all rounds of the FA Cup except the semi-finals and finals. When a replay is necessary, it may be played at the home ground of the opposite team. Two-legged ties are seen as fairer, since they give neither team home advantage; conversely, in the National Football League, home advantage is a reward for being the better seed or, in the opening wild-card round, winning the division.
  • or played at a neutral venue, as in the final match of many tournaments, including the
    A.S. Roma at the Stadio Olimpico
    , Roma's home ground (despite this, Roma had been drawn as the technical away team for this match).
• best-of-n series, where the team winning more matches wins the series. These are common in major Canadian and American sports leagues; games cannot be drawn and series are typically best of 3, 5 or 7, though 9-game series are sometimes used. Such series are typically structured with alternating home venues so that the higher-ranked team gets the extra game (if necessary).

References