Sepp Blatter, the Fifa president, has said future World Cup's could be played with a return to the golden goal rule or without extra-time.

Blatter, 74, felt teams adopted a defensive mentality during the World Cup finals in South Africa in June and said his organisation may make changes.

The golden goal rule sees teams who score first in extra-time win the match and was used in the 2002 World Cup finals, but resulted in teams being more cautious as they were afraid to concede a goal without time to find an equaliser. It was crapped before the 2006 finals in Germany.

"We have to try to find a way to encourage free-flowing football in tournaments like the World Cup, with teams playing to win," said Blatter.

"We plan to take the opportunity to look at the concept of extra time as well. Often we see teams set themselves up even more defensively in extra time, in an attempt to avoid conceding a goal at all costs.

"To prevent this, we could go directly to a penalty shoot-out at full time, or reintroduce the golden goal rule. We'll see what emerges from the committee meetings."