

Soccer and the law of large numbers - yummyfajitas
http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2010/06/soccer_and_the.html

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RiderOfGiraffes
People seem to be assuming that the point of the game is to determine which is
the better team. It isn't. The point of the game is to get the fans
interested, excited, vocal and voluble.

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.

~~~
edanm
I completely agree. I made pretty much the same point on the last "change
Soccer's rules" thread:

"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."

~~~
jpd
Yes, but what's happening in soccer right now, is that the dealer saw a full
house, but decided to only count it as a high-card 5.

~~~
RiderOfGiraffes
I don't disagree, but that's not the point. There are two things being
debated. One is that the errors by the officials are unaccaptable and they
must introduce technology to reduce them. I'm not discussing that. The other
is that somehow the game is flawed because there aren't enough goals, and
hence chance plays a large part. I'm arguing that such claims are misguided.

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.

~~~
jules
> 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.

~~~
RiderOfGiraffes
Noted - you are right - I should've read more carefully. _Mea Culpa_

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patrickk
This guy should have stopped typing this article after the first line:

 _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.

~~~
eru
Does the Champions League have finals where you get knocked out after losing
one match?

~~~
patrickk
Yes - in the knockout stages (same as World Cup, there's group stages, then
second round, quarter finals, semis and the final).

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.

~~~
eru
I believe that. It's just that I'd rather play Nethack than sit in front of a
TV.

~~~
patrickk
I'm actually of the same mindset.

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.

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mbubb
Except that this would make a qualitative change to the game.

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.

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whyenot
I'm not a big football fan, but it's hard to live outside the US and not be
exposed to it.

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!"

------
naz
The low scores are the reason why football is so exciting. Both teams know a
single goal could change the course of the game. In American sports when it is
52-11 who cares if the losing team scores?

~~~
jimbokun
Also, after watching a little more football, I can now watch a 2-0 match and
see how that result can be just as decisive as a 35 - 7 victory.

(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.)

~~~
tshtf
7 is a very close approximation.

In 2006, the average world cup combined score was 2.3 goals:
[http://www.insidescience.org/current_affairs/best_team_not_g...](http://www.insidescience.org/current_affairs/best_team_not_guaranteed_world_cup_success)

In 2006, the average NFL combined score was 20.7 points:
[http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_average_score_for_one_...](http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_average_score_for_one_team_in_an_NFL_game)

20.7/2.3 = 9

~~~
jonknee
Your NFL comparison is off by 2x, the numbers were for a single team. "What is
the average score for one team in an NFL game?"

~~~
tshtf
You are correct. The multiplier becomes 18!

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sdfx
Luck is a big part of the appeal of soccer. As with most sports, you usually
start rooting for the team that is popular in your area. With a significant
reduction of this luck-component, strong teams would dominate the leagues
which would in turn reduce the appeal for supporters of smaller clubs. Under
the current rules, it's not unusual for a smaller team to win against a much
stronger opponent from time to time. To tilt the probability towards the
favorite reduces the appeal for supporters of the underdog.

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.

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jimbokun
The group stage handles this quite well. If you play conservatively and accept
ties, you most likely will need a win in the final game to have a chance to
advance. Furthermore, tie breakers going by goal differential then goals
scored also encourages more aggressive play. Taken over the course of three
games, it is very likely that teams will end up in their rightful position.
Take the U.S., for example. Even on the wrong end of multiple calls in close
matches, they won their group, and deservedly so.

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.

~~~
brazzy
You're right, the 1950 FIFA world cup had a second (final) group stage.
Ironically, the last match ended up being the decisive one anyway.

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miguelpais
Football (sorry, Soccer) is not the kind of sport which enables high scores,
it never was. Actually, in the past, goals seemed to occur more often, but
that was mostly because of the huge discrepancies between the opposing teams.

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.

~~~
patrickk
You only have to look at Real Madrid to see what happens when you think only
of attacking. The thought process of their president Florentino Perez (who
makes new signing decisions, not the manager) must look like this:

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.

~~~
miguelpais
I think Mourinho will finally give that club the stability it needs either by
bringing new players, not particularly the big stars, but those who are able
to play in the context of a team, or he will just take the big stars out of
their pedestal and make them work if they really want a place in the team.

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WorkerBee
_It seems as though every game I read about, including Germany-England and
Argentina-Mexico yesterday, is decided by a lucky goal or a wrongly-allowed
goal or a wrongly-disallowed goal._

Except that it wasn't. Germany 4, England 1. The wrongly-disallowed goal would
have given England 2.

And Argentina 3, Mexico 1.

~~~
forinti
But the goals in question happened at critical stages of the game. England
would have tied 2-2 and Mexico was tied but playing better than Argentina.

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.

~~~
jimbokun
I would still say, though, that the better side won in each match.

~~~
rikthevik
That's a cop-out. Saying "they would have won anyway" doesn't help the fact
that both England and Mexico got ripped off completely, and it was completely
preventable.

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brazzy
I suspect that arguing about wrong referee decision or how close games _could_
have ended is a major factor in what makes football so popular and emotional.

No spectator sport is really about watching the better team win predictably.

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SkyMarshal
Very interesting take on the problem. While everyone is clamoring for goal-
line refs or technical solutions, he proposes changing the rules somehow to
enable more scoring, which would reduce the consequences of wrongfully allowed
or disallowed goals.

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.

~~~
sandipagr
can't believe people are suggesting to change how the world's most popular and
most watched game is played

~~~
eru
I am OK with experiments---or how do you think people came up with football in
the first place?

Just make sure you fork the game, instead of changing the original.

~~~
sandipagr
true but that applies more when you are starting off, no? I mean minor changes
are understandable but suggestions like not having a goal keeper, goalkeeper
not using hands are well..

~~~
eru
> true but that applies more when you are starting off, no?

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.

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CoryMathews
The main thing that football(soccer) needs is another official to use
technology such as a replay camera to overrule the officials on the field, on
obviously large mistakes that any ref could make.

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. )

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akie
Neither of the games he mentions were won by luck alone. True, there was some
luck involved (and some bad decisions), and his argument in general still
holds, but to the games he mentions it doesn't apply.

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mrkurt
There's plenty of "luck" based drama in other sports. I can think of numerous
games in American Football that were decided by a moment of extreme luck or a
single bad refereeing decision.

If you want to eliminate that, you need to try and maximise score differential
(rather than just total score).

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sandipagr
this is what I called twisted logic. Like seriously? how does using technology
not solve the problem that you need to change the way it is played. The author
forgets that it is still the world's most watched and popular game and there
is a reason it is so.

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lookACamel
The simplest way to increase the effect of the law of large numbers without
compromising the play of the game would be to have teams play multiple games.
Best out of 15 anyone?

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unwantedLetters
Does anyone have any ideas on what exactly can be done to improve scoring?

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.

~~~
patrickk
The only changes that should be made are in relation to video technology.

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.

