There's gotta be a better way

Penalties are generally the outcome of a final where one or both teams go into the game determined not to lose. So how can teams to be encouraged to give it a go? Make penalties a worse option than losing the game. Huh? Okay, a little history. This is the first World Cup for which the holders have had to qualify; until now the holders, as in most competitions, were given automatic passage to the next tournament. France considered their failure to get through Japan/Korea's group stage to be a consequence of not having played a competitve match for two years, since the preceding European Championship. So they whined to FIFA, poor lambs, and FIFA caved. That decision has to be reversed: rules favouring the big guns are never good -- they're even worse for a competition as inherently lopsided as the WC.

Back to the final. Let's say two teams are deadlocked after 120 minutes of football. As usual, penalties would be played. The difference being that that wouldn't generate the final result, simply who'd get to look after the cup for the following four years. For being complicit in a combined lack of ambition, not just the 'winner', but also the 'runner-up', would get automatic qualification to the following tournament. Further, they would be placed in the same group -- condemned to their own personal group of death. Their group game would, in addition to its normal function, be the decider of the previous competition's permanent winner.