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Comment by alkonaut | Hacker News Reader

None of the ones I have seen are "proper" own goals. They are still, as usual, defenders doing desperate clears in front of attackers that would have scored 999 times out of 1000 if the defender had let it be. Those in my view shoulnd't even count as "own goals" as they currently do. The passer should get the goal and that should be the end of it. This is how it works elsewhere like in ice hockey and others.

Counting "own goals" as any goal where a defender is last to touch the ball and it wouldn't have gone into the goal otherwise is simple but it's just not useful. The skill is setting the defender in that impossible situation to begin with, and it's the attackers' effort that does it. It's filed together with true own goals which are mistakes - and it's silly.

"Proper" own goals where a normal goal isn't almost a given in the milliseconds after, are still extremely rare and always were.

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I agree with what you say, but the question that TFA asks is still relevant, since 'own goals' have always been counted the way they are. So the number of own goals is still higher than usual.

I don't think it's necessarily true they have always counted the way they have even though the "rules" for counting theem have always been the same.

I think the reason is because there is more at stake. Take last night for example. The defender busted a gut to get back to try and cut out the cross, even though the chances of doing so were minimal - the end result being he put it into his own net. In a normal league game the defender would likely have just accepted his team's fate and Sterling would have had an easy tap in.

The first goal in the Croatia-Spain match was pretty properly an own goal.

Yep, that's hard to attribute to an attacker with maximum effort, so should count as one of those extremely rare own goals. My guess (without having seen all the games) is that it's just 1-2 in the tournament, and that the figure historically has been just 0..2 as well. What would stand out would be if there were 4-5 such goals in a tournament. Not that there is a dozen of the "defender own-goals from the goal-line" type.

I think you're nitpicking a bit but let's go along with your definition and rephrase the question: why are there so many "defender own-goals from the goal-line" in this tournament? It's still an interesting question

Definitely an own goal, rather than a deflection.

And yet there's some doubt as to whether the OG is attributed correctly. Most people who watch football would say Simon f*cked up badly. But records are gonna say Pedri did it. What we really want records to reflect is the responsible part, no? Even that ends up in a bit of a grey area if we consider that a lot of goals are scored as tap-ins where the credit should really go to someone who unlocked the defense.

Yeah, I agree.

By that logic we should count balls that hit the goal frame before getting in as "own goals" or "nobody's goals"

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