Soccer and the law of large numbers
econlog.econlib.org
econlog.econlib.org
The best teams tend to float to the top over the course of a season, and the best teams are more likely to win, but the excitement would be lessened if the result became more predictable. If I play Kasparov at chess I'll lose and the game will be completely uninteresting, but if I play backgammon against the world's best there is a chance I'll win. That creates more interest.
I agree that howlers such as the "ghost goal" from England, and the offside goal for Argentina are blots and shouldn't happen, and I don't argue that technology should remain prohibited, but I do think that meddling with the rules to try to make the game less "chancey" are mis-guided.
"One of the reasons Poker is so popular is that even a terrible player can beat a pro by chance, some of the time.
I've always suspected the same is true of Football. Any attempt to "fix" the game by making refereeing better makes the game more fair. While that might seem like a good thing, I don't think anyone is qualified to decide whether that will make the game more or less popular. And considering it's the world's most popular sport, tinkering with the games in unpredictable ways is stupid."
In some sense the two are not entirely orthogonal because a single error by an official that leads to, or prevents, a goal has an enormous effect on the game. Nevertheless, there are two issues, I'm talking about one, and you are talking about the other.
I'm discussing the point raised in the original submission. You aren't, except insofar as they are not entirely unrelated, as I remark above.
He is not responding to your comment. He is responding to edanm, who is discussing exactly what jpd is discussing.
But it doesn't really matter what the method is that makes soccer so unpredictable. Part of it is that there are few goals, so tiny mistakes are often decisive. Part of it is that referees often make mistakes. Should it be this way? I don't know. I'm sure that part of the appeal of Soccer is the randomness. I'm also pretty sure that part of the appeal is the frustration people feel towards referees. It makes everyone upset, but it keeps people talking, keeps people caring.
At the end of the day, what matters (to Fifa, at least) is to keep Soccer as popular as it is now. And since no one really knows if "fixing" the refereeing will help or hurt Soccer, I don't think anyone is willing to risk the change (and rightfully so).
Of course it does. I suggest we flip a coin and decide the match based on the outcome.
That's exactly the opposite of what I think makes soccer so appealing: almost no one can predict which team will take a World Cup, and every World Cup has its own team which does far better than predicted. This rarely happens in Chess.
I am baffled that anyone could think that introducing random unfair judgement by a referee improves a sport.
What I do think is that, with something so obviously successful, it's pretty hard to know what kind of changes might break it.
To use a simple analogy, assume you're a new programmer going over some very old financial software at a bank. The thing is written in 30-year-old COBOL code (and written badly at that). I'm guessing most programmers would cringe at such a system, not understanding why it isn't being "improved" by rewriting it in a better language (and there are good reasons too, like being able to easily add new features, etc.).
But as you and I both know, it's probably not a good idea to change it. Not because COBOL doesn't suck, not because there are good reasons to rewrite (there are some good reasons), but because it already works, and no one wants to mess with that.
P.S. Having said that, I personally do wish they'll change something to make the refereeing more solid. I don't think it will make Soccer any worse, even though I can't be sure. More importantly, I'm pretty sure that Fifa is going to cave on this issue withing 10-20 years, because of public pressure, and allow some form of instant replay.
I watched all the US games in the World Cup this year, and I never came away thinking that the US was actually better (or as good, yay ties!) as the teams they played. And, in fact, they seemed to be the better team against Ghana.
Hardly. The US was utterly out-classed in the first half. They didn't push their attacks as hard as the Ghanans, and they couldn't get their defense in place reliably. Things evened up in the second half and overtimes, but it never felt to me like there was a point where the US dominated the game.
I am not a soccer fan.
It seems by writing this, he is jumping on the 'every-four-years' soccer bandwagon that goes on in the US (or so it seems to a non-American).
I don't say this to be nasty, but because of his limited knowledge of the game, he doesn't realise that in a league competition, such as the English Premiership (or MLS in America), luck plays a much lesser factor in deciding who lifts the trophy (in other words, over 38 games, the cream will rise to the top. And penalty shootouts aren't a factor). As the cliche goes, "the league table doesn't lie".
In 2005 when Liverpool won the Champions League (World Cup-style competition, group stages and knockout stages hence luck can play a factor) I argued with many Liverpool fans that their team was still fairly crap as that year they only managed to finish fifth in the Premiership (league competition, hence luck doesn't really come into play).
ps. The Champions League is the best soccer competition on the planet, the World Cup is second rate by comparison. Most of the best players in the world play in this competition, which is between Europe's elite club teams. Generally, top players play far better for club rather than country as they are more familiar with their club teammates, as they play with them, week-in, week-out, rather than just once in a blue moon. Also, by the time the World up comes around, many players are tired after a long club season - see England yesterday, for example. Not to mention you get a set of really top players all concentrated in a single team (Real Madrid, Barcelona, Manchester United) not unlike an outperforming startup.
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UEFA_Champions_League#Format
If you have never seen it, I highly advise watching the Champions League as the standard is very high.
I've pretty much stopped watching TV - apart from certain live sports and the ahem occasional downloaded TV show. My life is too precious to spend it watching ads and mindless chatter.
This would be a version of that most hated of results - the shootout.
People who truly understand the game (I am not in that subset) speak in terms of flow and touches and the setup. The qualities which makes a Dutch or Brasilian or German or etc style distinctive.
True fans do not watch for scoring alone.
People who watch American football do not do so for the scoring alone. High scoring games are often very sloppy and boring. The classic defensive-minded battles of the Giants or Bears are the games I remember from youth (or more recently Pittsburg or Baltimore).
The well played American football game is fought at the unglamorous point of the two lines each trying to wear the other down. The tension builds and one side cracks - a defensive lapse, a fumble, botched pass - and the game turns on a few such plays.
There are versions of American football that emphasize scoring - Arena league etc. There have been indoor soccer leagues that have rules for higher scoring.
But these are different games.
A good soccer game is a game of flow and of concentrated effort. Multiple failed attempts - small adjustments - perhaps a lapse or two and a goal.
One of the interesting graphics I noted in the online coverage of this world cup (in the NYTimes I think) is a slider bar showing the preponderance of the ball location over time. Things like this can get the casual or new fan to begin to understand what there is about the game - there than scoring - which is mesmerizing.
Part of football's unique character is how rare goals are. When a team scores a goal, it is a big occasion (GOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL![1]). If you change that, you fundamentally change the game, a game that is the most watched, most popular sport in the world. Also, the assumption that the only purpose of a match is to pick the better team is probably wrong. An important additional factor, perhaps the most important factor, is to make the game exciting for the fans. Here, I think the unpredictability of goals helps.
[1] When I lived in Panama, the announcers had a really funny ability to turn a goal eventually into a pitch for Goldstar Consumer Eclectronics -- "GOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLDDDDDSSSSTTTAAARRRR!"
(One more tip for the Amercian Football fan: multiplying every score by 7 is a good way to convert to something more familiar, kind of like converting Celcius to Fahrenheit.)
In 2006, the average world cup combined score was 2.3 goals: http://www.insidescience.org/current_affairs/best_team_not_g...
In 2006, the average NFL combined score was 20.7 points: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_average_score_for_one_...
20.7/2.3 = 9
It seems that people who grew up with high scoring games, exact time-taking and video referees often times feel the urge to "fix" the perceived flaws of soccer. I don't want to be snotty, but a lot of people love the game in it's current form. If you don't get what's fun about a good game that ends in a 1:0 that's fine, but please don't ruin it for the rest of us.
I believe at one point a group play system was used all the way through the end of the World Cup. This is probably a more statistically sound way of determining the best side, but with less fan appeal, I think.
I think it would be much more easier to embrace what Rugby does, and get a referee analyzing TV footage to help the field referees when doubts arise, than changing the one thing that makes soccer what it is, the act of scoring a goal and what it represents, reducing it to nothing, turning Soccer into one of those sports where in each attack there is a point taken for the attacking team, being the game decided by those few attacks that weren't successful.
1. Get a €300million loan from a bank.
2. Go out and buy as many attacking, 'flair-players' as possible. (Ronaldo, Kaka, Benzema).
3. Sell lots and lots of Real Madrid shirts.
Notice that winning trophies does not enter the equation. Indeed, Real Madrid got dumped out of the Champions League by a fairly ordinary Lyon side.
Except that it wasn't. Germany 4, England 1. The wrongly-disallowed goal would have given England 2.
And Argentina 3, Mexico 1.
When your only option is to win, you have to open up your game, and your defence becomes vunerable. You can't know what would've happened, but you can't deny that these mistakes altered the dynamics of the games.
In an elimination match, when you go a point down, you NEED THAT POINT. You have to start playing a more aggressive formation - you've gotta have Everyone on offense. Because of that, any break by the other team is suddenly FAR more dangerous, which is why the momentum went as badly as it did.
Generally, I agree that GER was better than ENG and I liked ARG better than MEX, but they weren't THAT much better.
No spectator sport is really about watching the better team win predictably.
I've always wondered what the game would be like if you simplified it even more and removed goal keepers, so that no player on the field could touch the ball with their hands. Replace goalies with another defender, or not.
That would likely open up scoring, as long-range shots would have a realistic chance to score, and short-range shots would be almost guaranteed if they were on-goal.
I'm sure there would be cons as well, but can't think what they might be.
Edit: One con would be more breaks in play, though they could probably mitigate that by allowing the scored-on team to restart with a quick goal-kick instead of a center kick-off. Center kick-offs often end up pushed back to the defensive line anyway, to open up the other team.
This variant is called "Richard" over here, it's played on a 5-football field(1), and you can't shoot from after the midfield (otherwise it would be far too easy).
The thing is, it's far less skill-challenging than having to beat a goalie.
If you've never played football/soccer, you can't know the thrill of having just that one chance (unless you're a striker), the frustration of missing it (more often than not), and the pure bliss of making it.
As a defender (most of the time) I'd say that football is more frustrating if you're a defender or goalie than as a forward, since you get so few chances to show off (and strikers are the heroes more often than not). As an example, the best player on the field for Uruguay's win over Korea was defensive midfielder Diego Pérez, but the most lauded player is striker Luis Suárez (which made two goals with a huge level of difficulty to be fair), since goals are so hard to come by.
* The game would turn into a boring series of attempted long-distance lobs. You'd probably have to reduce the goal size significantly to prevent scoring from anywhere on the pitch.
* Teams with very good defenses actually have goalkeepers that don't see a lot of action. This change would promote even stronger defense, with a more negative outlook, and still result in low-scoring games - possibly even lower scoring than is currently the case. The goalkeeper is key to what gives back-line players the confidence and permission to move forward and help with attacks.
Just make sure you fork the game, instead of changing the original.
Maybe. But I am uncomfortable with an argument, that could just as well have been used in favour of, say, Microsoft sticking to Windows 95. It was the most popular operating system in its time after all.
This way events such as the first goal in the mexico game should not happen. (in case you missed it, Argentina scored making it 1-0 however a player was clearly off sides and the goal should not have counted. They showed the replay over and over to the viewers, But the officials stuck with their call and counted the illegal goal. This really took a toll on Mexico's moral. )
If you want to eliminate that, you need to try and maximise score differential (rather than just total score).
I think increasing scoring would take something away from football (soccer) rather than add to it, but it will be interesting to hear how exactly people think the rules should be changed.
FIFA should experiment with every refereeing decision possible being able to be analysed/scrutinized/affirmed by a Television Match Official (similar to rugby) and then scale back as necessary.
FIFA don't have the wisdom or foresight to do this, sadly. It's badly needed to stamp out cheating, diving, off-the-ball fouls not spotted by the ref, Thierry Henry handball-type incidents, incorrect disallowed goal incidents etc.
EDIT: They (FIFA) did try to increase the likelihood of goals being scored in this World Cup and the last World Cup also, by messing with the ball design, making it's flight path unpredictable and therefore more difficult for keepers to save a shot at goal.
And then it wouldn't be Football anymore...