

Win a soccer game by more than five points and you lose - latch
http://news.nationalpost.com/2010/06/01/win-a-soccer-game-by-more-than-five-points-and-you-lose-ottawa-league-says/

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cperciva
Such a rule could be abused in really bad ways. If you're losing by 5 points,
kick the ball into your own goal -- you're now down 6 points and win by
default.

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nevinera
This was my first thought as well. Actually, my first thought was "Pass to
keeper, own-goal, drop to my team, repeat". I can't see any way to lose.

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noelchurchill
It would turn into a game of defending your opponents goal to prevent them
from scoring on themselves. Actually if you think about it, it could add a
whole new element to the game and maybe even be exciting, if not more
confusing...

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amalcon
The "suicide" strategy is much harder to pull off effectively. The team to go
to that strategy would need to "win" by more than five goals. If the other
team can score only enough to keep the difference less than five, then they
win by the regular rules.

This would mean that a team attempting the "suicide" strategy from the outset
would need to be _much_ better in that paradigm than the other team. If we
assume that the skills involved are similar, this would mean that they could
probably win anyway using the normal rules. Adopting the strategy partway
through the game -- say, when behind by three goals -- could be effective, but
if the other team knows about this, they would keep the difference to only two
goals.

It would result in either a heavy emphasis on defense, or a strategy of
scoring one goal and then passing the ball around for the rest of the game.

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nevinera
There is one problem with your analysis. The team that gets scored 'on' is the
one that gets the ball for the kick-off.

Since different teams get the initial and half-time kick-offs, it boils down
to which team is capable of scoring the most own-goals in the same (lengthy)
amount of time. The second team has a _huge_ advantage, because they win by
scoring 4 less own-goals than the leading team.

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hristov
I don't see what the big deal is. I should note that in professional soccer
coaches also try not to win games by more than five points because that can
cause fights, injuries, your players being suspended, or even in some cases
riots.

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philwelch
It's so hard to score goals at that level that, frankly, once a team is up 2
or 3 goals they usually stop trying. In the rare cases where the disparity
between teams is great enough that a blowout is even possible (early stage cup
matches, for instance), you rest some of your starters and get some match
experience to some of your reserve players.

On top of all of that, though, you're absolutely right--piling on is a dick
move and will definitely provoke the hooligans, depending on where you are.
(Soccer is serious business--in most of the world, supporters of opposing
teams are actually seated in segregated parts of the stadium just as a
security measure.)

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jrmurad
"The registration fee, rergardless [sic] of the sport, does not give a parent
the right to insult or belittle the organization,” he said."

I know their country has severely limited free speech but surely Canadians
still have the _right_ to criticize any organization regardless of membership?

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cperciva
Yes, everybody has the right to criticize the soccer league. And the soccer
league has the right to not accept the children of troublesome parents.

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mistermann
To me, this is the most important statement from the article:

 _Mr. Cale said the league’s 12-person board of directors is not trying to
take the fun out of the game, they are simply trying to make it fair._

Some may consider this minor, but I think it is this type of thinking that has
caused so many things to be screwed up in western politics and society. People
literally do not understand the real meaning of concepts such as fairness or
equality.

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og1
I can understand this rule for elementary school ages. To have it for the
entire league which goes up through high school age sounds like a little much
to me though.

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pbhjpbhj
Why does the age of the children matter? Surely the lessons you're trying to
teach with sport are the same no matter what age the pupils.

\---

>Without the opportunity to prove I'm the best, I might as well go for a quiet
walk.

I've played quite a bit of [association] football in the past in Sunday
leagues in the UK including my Uni's league and was in school teams too - a
good game for me was one where I played well and managed to do my part well
and have fun; those games were not always ones in which our team scored more
points.

I stopped watching football many years ago when the professional foul became
rife and I felt that top players were there to win at all costs, including the
cost of playing a decent game of football.

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ShabbyDoo
This reminds me of the effect computerized ranking schemes for playoff berths
had on the sportsmanship of high school coaches. When it became possible for a
team with an N-0 record to miss making the playoffs because it had not beaten
its opponents by a sufficiently high score, winning coaches had an incentive
to keep their starting players in blowout games in an attempt to maximize the
score differential. Without this rule, there was a tacit agreement that, after
some threshold, lesser players would be substituted by both sides. As I'm no
athlete, I don't know what the convention (or signaling mechanism) was, but
the result was usually a swapping out of players on both sides within just a
few plays.

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noelchurchill
I personally believe that coddling youth can potentially do more damage than
good. Learning to overcome challenges and deal with defeat is part of being
human and growing up and it builds a sense of confidence and self reliance.

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shade
I'm concerned about that as well.

On the one hand, I can understand that you don't want to grind kids down and
completely humiliate them. On the other hand, I don't see how they can learn
to handle adversity if we constantly shelter them from anything that might
hurt their feelings. Sure, it sucks to lose (the soccer and basketball teams I
played on were _terrible_ ) but sometimes life works out that way,
unfortunately.

Granted, I'm talking out of my rear end here since I don't have kids, but
several of my friends do and most of them agree that kids aren't that fragile.

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ajscherer
I don't understand why this is perceived as being about self-esteem rather
than sportsmanship. It isn't like kids are so dumb they aren't going to know
when they are getting their asses kicked, or that they will take pride in a
win achieved by losing too severely.

I don't think this rule is going to have the intended effect at all, but I
also don't think it is going to have any effect on these kids' ability to
compete as adults.

I do think it's a bit sad that parents and coaches are doing such a poor job
of instilling sportsmanship that the league felt a silly rule like this was
necessary.

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stipes
My initial reaction to the title was that winning a professional level soccer
game by more than five points _does_ cause a loss of sorts: the physiological
taxation that such effort causes could easily decrease the chances of winning
games in the near future. Taking this physical side effect of over-effort into
account in finding the optimal strategy would be interesting.

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char
This is a terrible idea. All it does is teach the talented kids that they
shouldn't exert themselves to the best of their abilities because they might
make others feel bad, and the not-so-talented kids that they don't need to try
hard to improve themselves because their competition will always have a limit.

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raganwald
What about the other suggestions: Once you get up three goals, switch
positions. Play with your weak foot. try different setups, like eight
defenders and two strikers.

Sounds like fun to me.

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pbhjpbhj
>Sounds like fun to me.

Sounds more like humiliation. Like the stronger team are rubbing your nose in
it and saying "we can beat you left-footed wearing our shirts over our eyes"
...

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amalcon
I've heard of rules similar to this, except that the coach is reprimanded in
lieu of handing out a loss. All that happens is that the best players are only
permitted to play defense.

I suppose that's better than providing an exploitable victory condition, but
it doesn't really help anyway.

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superjared
When I was a little leaguer, we had a rule where any run above opposing team's
score + 5 didn't count.

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mrkurt
God forbid that other kids on the winning team (who may not score often) get a
chance to score.

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patrickk
Isn't this just the sports version of the EU or the DOJ slapping fines on
Microsoft or other big companies for anti-competitive practices? i.e. you are
so far ahead that we are going to use the rules to cripple you in some way?

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tjpick
why don't they just mix the players into more evenly matched teams?

