It’s
a Funny Old Game
Grabbed
an article from the Sunday Time (the seat of all knowledge) about
football, or soccer, or association football whichever you prefer.
It’s
been lying around on my desk for so long I’ve lost track of the
date, but on the reverse side is a report of the Leeds Utd v
Sheffield Wednesday match won by Leeds 1-0 – which, BTW is the most
common score in any football match (the final tally was most often
1-0, proof,that soccer was as low-scoring as suspected. This result
has occurred in more than 30,000 games — 16 percent of the total.
Other common scores: 2-1 (about 27,000 games), 2-0 (about 22,000) and
1-1 (about 22,000). All highly interesting for stattoes but
significant?
Back
to the article: it begins with an injunction for anyone who wants to
bet on Man Utd to beat Barcelona to progress to the s/f of the
Champions League – on paper a fairly unlikely outcome (they
lost 4-0 on aggregate).
The
best odds from the bookies were 13/2. The true odds surely must be
at least 10-0. After all, as the article says, Barcelona were a much
better team, Man Utd have never beaten Barcelona in the Nou Camp and
Manchester had lost 4 of their last five games. So, the bookies were
right but the odds were a nonsense!
The
reason football is so popular, so our author says, is down to two
things, One: the system of reward in the game and two the influence
of luck, good fortune or downright daft things happening.
The
article insists that because the goals are so scarce when one does
come along it rewards the fan for his patience. “It’s not like
basketball, where they score every few numbing seconds or cricket
where you wait five days to celebrate your draw.”
Correct.
But the author has drawn all the wrong conclusions!
What
he sees as defects in the aforementioned games are really their
strengths.
He
goes on: “the remarkable thing about football is that winning,
statistically, takes about 50% ability and 50% luck – and you do
not as mast managers insist on saying make your own luck. It just
happens evenly distributed across all football teams.”
Chris
Anderson and David Sally, in their book The Numbers Game – Why
Everything You Know About Football is Wrong, collated stats that show
that in a league game a poor side (no explanation of how to judge a
poor side) will win 46% of the time against a much better team (again
objective criteria missing). It is very different in rugby,
basketball, baseball and American football. In those sports the
better side has up to an 80% likelihood of winning. The longest odds
for the favourite are always in football.
So.
our author contends: the important reason why the game is so
compelling. . . predictability goes out of the window. .. . we cannot
be absolutely sure that our own team will get thumped when they play
the league leaders, the way we could be sure if were supporting a
basketball team.
This
is just silly – even the league champions in basketball lose plenty
of games.
The peroration: the
authorities want the element of chance minimised so that the outcome
of a game might genuinely be a reflection of brilliance versus
mediocrity (and this is somehow a bad thing?) And we do this via the
introduction of VAR, so that we can be sure that accident and chance
are minimised. What if the thing the authorities are trying to get
rid of is the main reason we all keep watching?
The entire premise of this
article is just wrong. Even in the sports he mentions there is a
large amount of chance.
I give as an example: The KC
Chiefs having been outplayed for the whole of the first quarter v the
New England Patriots dragged themselves back into the play-off game
to draw even after normal time. Predictably they lost the toss and
lost the overtime game. At the end of regulation time they would
have won had not one of their players lined up in an off-side
position. KC fans were, of course, disappointed and despondent, but
able to accept the defeat as the loss was the fault of the Chiefs
players and not some chance occurrence.
Contrast this with a match I
remember well: European Cup Final 1975 - Bayern Munich went into the
match as favourites, because they were the reigning champions.
Watched by a crowd of 48,374, Leeds had the best of the opening
exchanges of the match and had two appeals for a penalty kick turned
down by the referee Michel Kitabdjian. Bayern suffered two injuries
in the first half to defender Björn Andersson and striker Uli
Hoeneß, following strong tackles by Leeds players. A Peter Lorimer
goal for Leeds in the 62nd minute was disallowed, when Billy Bremner
was adjudged to be offside. Franz Roth scored in the 71st minute for
Bayern and Gerd Müller extended the lead ten minutes later, to
secure a 2–0 victory for Bayern.
It was Bayern's second
consecutive victory in the competition, although they failed to
retain their Bundesliga title, finishing in 10th place. Riots by the
Leeds fans during the match led to UEFA banning the club from
European competition for four years, although this was reduced to two
years on appeal.
The riot was the direct result
of the Leeds fans sense of injustice. Their team had out-played the
opposition. The very thing that the article praises directly caused
the riot. Notwithstanding that many football fans – particularly
in the 70’s and 80’s were then and may remain first class morons
– the sense of the basic unfairness of the game was the major
factor in the riot. Basketball, rugby and NFL fans do not riot –
chiefly because they know the rules of the game are designed so that
the best team wins most of the time. Upsets do happen and everyone
loves an underdog but the burning sense of injustice is avoided when
your team is beaten fair and square by the better team.
The odd thing is that football
is moving towards the 21st century – albeit very slowly.
Those seemingly more hide-bound games like cricket and rugby have
adopted technology as a way to make the game fairer.
Football is way behind and
were it not for the seemingly endless propensity for the fans to
tolerate any manner of nonsense it would have been dragged screaming
and kicking into the modern era.
More idiots like our author do
not help.
