Fifa president Sepp Blatter has asked Franz Beckenbauer to come up with an alternative to penalty shootouts to decide football matches.
The Swiss says the "tragedy" of penalties has convinced him to seek an alternative to the 12-yard spotkicks.
"Football can be a tragedy when you go to penalty kicks," he said.
"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."
Blatter's quotes come after Chelsea defeated Bayern Munich, who Beckenbauer is president of, in the Champions League final, which will reignite suspicion Blatter is an Anglophobe.
Zambia also won the Africa Cup of Nations in a penalty shoot-out in February, when they beat Ivory Coast.
It is the latest in a long list of crackpot proclamations Blatter has made.
In November last year, he suggested racism was tolerable on a football pitch if settled with a handshake at the end of a game.
Back in 2004, he mused women should "wear tighter shorts and low cut shirts... to create a more female aesthetic" in football so they would attract more male fans.
Less frivolously, he has been dogged with allegations of corruption ever since he was elected Fifa president in 1998.
Blatter was addressing delegates at the Fifa congress on Friday.
The world football governing body has also revealed the decision on introducing goal-line technology will now take place in Zurich on 5 July.
England's friendly with Belgium at Wembley on 2 June will host the testing of camera-based system Hawk-Eye.