See also the Disgrace of Gijón (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disgrace_of_Gijón). This is between West Germany and Austria, the last match in a four-team round-robin group in the 1982 World Cup. Before this match it was clear that if West Germany won by 1 or 2 goals, West Germany and Austria would both advance; otherwise one of those teams would advance along with Algeria. You can guess what happens: West Germany scores a goal and then both teams stop trying. Since then, in the World Cup the two final matches of the group start at the same time.
This is probably why the 48-team World Cup starting in 2026 will have 12 groups of 4 instead of 16 groups of 3 - there are similar opportunities for collusion in the final match of a three-team group, and no easy fix.
Just spit balling, one fix could be to just skip the group stage and go right to a big knockout stage, ala domestic cups. That seems too obvious/simple though, so I'm sure there's some reason why they don't do it this way. Maybe they want every country to have a minimum number of games...
Having a longer group stage will probably make these situation less likely as the best teams will pull ahead, but I don't think we want the players to play so many more games.
Going straight to the knockout stages means half the sides in the competition only play one game though, which isn't great for eager anticipation in those countries or travelling fans. Also increases the probability of big sides being amongst the sides going out early due to freak results when they're a bit rusty.
The actual solution - playing the final games in a four game group simultaneously - removes most of the incentives for playing out draws (and means that a side that might be knocked out if the two sides in the other game draw is busy trying to win their game rather than watching powerlessly from the sidelines)
There's not enough money made when you eliminate teams like that. You just eliminated ticket sales and broadcast rights. The tournaments are money making efforts that just happen to entertain people that are fans. Most of it is an excuse for the organizers to get stuff. (yes, I'm very cynical)
But the group stage won't be any longer - they're still groups of 4, so each team still plays three group games. However there might be more "pulling away" in a 48-team World Cup than in a 32-team World Cup just because there will be weaker teams in those groups for the strongest teams to beat up on.
It's a really bad way of finding the "best" team too. I think this was written about by Babbage criticising the tennis tournament at Wimbledon but I don't have the reference to hand and my memory is unreliable.
This is hardly the first such weird outcome for a match that reflects a larger strategy of advancing in a tournament rather than simply attempting to win the match. It has been an ongoing scandal that teams collude to fix world cup matches during the qualifying rounds to ensure they both get a favourable position in the knockout rounds.
That is considered cheating in soccer, but if you look at a sport like cycling, it is common for "rival" teams to team up and work together to chase down a breakaway, just as it is common for "rival" members of a breakaway or echelon to cooperate to beat everyone else.
Why is one "match-fixing" and the other "the beauty of the sport?" Nothing more than expectations.
A football match is a one on one competition between two teams. If they cease to compete, it ceases to be a competition.
The equivalent isn't a couple of cycling teams collaborating in a multi-team race because they believe the peloton/echelon at a particular stage of the race will ultimately improve one their members' chances of success later in the race, it's a team involved in a pursuit race deciding to ride as slowly as possible to let the weaker team win for strategic reasons. I presume this is frowned upon too...
> The equivalent isn't a couple of cycling teams collaborating in a multi-team race because they believe the peloton/echelon at a particular stage of the race will ultimately improve one their members' chances of success later in the race,
It sounds an awful lot like a couple of football teams collaborating at a particular stage of a tournament because it will ultimately improve their members' chances of success later in the tournament.
Although, this particular case is different in that both teams were incentivized to win, just that one team needed to win by two, so with the game near the end of time, and a weird two points for ovetime goal rule, it made sense for both teams to deliberately score in their own nets at different points.
> It sounds an awful lot like a couple of football teams collaborating at a particular stage of a tournament because it will ultimately improve their members' chances of success later in the tournament.
Yes, if you completely ignore the point I made about collusion invariably meaning the matches themselves cease to be competitive (whereas a cycling race with riders sacrificing themselves for teammates' benefit and all kinds of tactical shenanigans between teams absolutely does have multiple participants willing and able to take all the points off any rider that isn't trying to win), and ignore the much closer cycling analogy (a race where one side doesn't race) you snipped off the end of the sentence. With sufficient willingness to dismiss relevant context, you can make pretty much anything sound like pretty much anything else. I don't think the Disgrace of Gijon and your average cycle race with multiple teams jostling for position looked equally competitive to sports fans or felt equally intensely competitive to the participants, and I don't think any cycling fan that enjoys the anticipation of seeing when riders will stop conserving their energy in the early part of the race and who the tactics will favour would feel the same way about a team deliberately losing a head-to-head pursuit race for the sake of future matchups ...
Fans aren't objecting to strategy, they're objecting to the lack of any competitiveness or skill involved in a head to head contest where sides collude or one side intentionally throws. (This particular game's a little different from two teams actually colluding and was probably amusingly crazy for the last three minutes, but still, there's not much skill in scoring unopposed in your own net)
It sounds like you misunderstand professional football profoundly. You're thinking of the sport people might enjoy playing. This article is about two businesses participating in a payout event.
It sounds like you have a profoundly optimistic view of the scale of the prize money for a tournament played between a handful of Caribbean islands in the early 1990s
(and the money side of things just gets FIFA even more angry, because the idea of competition drives the overall TV and sponsorship revenues, and two teams colluding to do boring or freaky stuff that might be in their own interests dents that)
Cheating, unsportsmanlike... The world is full of things that are legal but considered odious. Ultimately, if a sport becomes dominated by winning-at-the-expense-of-fan-enjoyment, it gets into trouble, so either the rules need another bug fix, or the sport evolves so that fans come to accept the behaviour as part of how the game is played.
In cycling, fans consider the wheeling and dealing within the peloton of who works, who doesn't work, and who actively disrupts the work as part of what makes the sport interesting. In soccer, fans protest and throw things onto the field when two teams play, one scores a goal, and then for the rest of the game both teams pass the ball around without trying to do any more scoring.
Is it cheating when both teams coöperate but simply enterprising use of the rules when one team attempts to score an own goal and the other team is forced to defend both goals?
Regardless of the fine print in the rules, the larger issue is what the fans expect from a soccer match.
True but cycling fans would consider it unsportsmanlike for a rival to attack when the GC leader is taking a piss or has a mechanical breakdown, even though that's perfectly within the rules.
I don’t think anyone rational would agree that it was unsportsmanlike.
The situation was very clear, if they won by a single goal their season was over. The goal to make it 2-1 occurred in the 83rd minute and they didn’t adopt this strategy until the 87th minute. In those intervening 4 minutes they attempted to score and restore their 2-goal lead.
There are other examples of locally detrimental behavior that aims for strategic advantage, such as the intentional walk in baseball.
Or that sometimes in football/soccer a team will intentionally kick the ball out of bounds to stop play because of an injury to a player, and the other team responds afterward by throwing the ball in to the other team or kicking it out themselves.
I'm not sure the fact they tried to win legitimately for a few minutes before resorting to something the opposition couldn't stop them from doing to exploit a loophole in the rules makes it sound less unsportsmanlike...
Technically it is match manipulation by most association regulations, even if not for financial gains. But it has always been part of the meta-game in such competitions, though this case was too extreme!
It’s not uncommon in many football (soccer) leagues because of the points system and the fact that it’s far easier to force a tie in football than most other sports unless it’s the finals.
Teams might force ties or even loose on purpose to hack their ranking for various reasons including to either face off or not face off against a specific team at a future stage.
> Although the Barbadians' own-goal was highly unconventional, FIFA decided not to penalise the team because they were playing optimally under the circumstances.
The right decision. Unlike the artificial dullness of the Disgrace of Gijón, it sounds like the Barbados - Grenada situation prompted some thrilling, if chaotic, goal scoring attempts. Grenada were attacking both goals and Barbados were defending both goals! It sounds like some kind of chess variant.
I wonder if one could create a really fun variant this way. One team guarding both nets, one team trying to score on both. Switch roles after a goal or some number of minutes.
Then let's add some extra fun: one goal is worth two points. So how much better do you guard that one? How much more strongly do you attack that one?
It might have done, for the three whole minutes the sides played that way after one of them cheated by doing this extremely boring and uncompetitive thing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZlqfhLwBnE
Unfortunately I don't think any footage of those minutes is publicly available
But FIFA's been unusually consistent in handing out bans for deliberate own goals for strategic reasons in other contexts, so I'm not sure why Barbados got away with this one. Fixed matches and mass brawls can be pretty entertaining to watch too!
I recommend the entire "Weird Rules" series from that channel. Not only is it amusing, but it's filled with examples of accidentally creating wrong incentives for your users-- er... players.
I wish they'd just show the footage of the 3 minutes at the end of regulation time. They showed _some_ footage, but not what I'd think would be the most interesting parts!
I think the only online footage of the game is here, just including clips of Grenada's goal at 83 minutes, Barbados' own goal, and the golden goal:
Talk about incentives... In the NBA, the commissioner could fine a team for resting players. This was because of a game where a team, the San Antonio Spurs, which was full of older players and was doing well enough in the standings, wanted to give their older stars a rest due to the back to back schedule, but the league didn't want this. The Spurs were incentivized to rest their players & avoid injuries because it's a long season. However, the game happened to be on National TV and the league and its media partners are incentivized to have both teams' stars on the court!
See also, tanking (which is really hard to define) for a better draft pick. It's funny to me to accuse bad teams of losing on purpose...
Pretty insane that Barbados was able to prevent Grenada from scoring an own goal. I would think that would be very easy to do if you were actively trying to do it.
With 3 minutes left I'd imagine there would be quite a bit of chaos. Do all the players know these rules? Do they understand why the opponents made an own goal? Have all of them figured out that an own goal is the optimal play now?
In chess, Grandmasters draws are terrible for spectators. Maybe they should penalize with less than 0.5 points or like in Linares, with cash or not inviting back.
This is probably why the 48-team World Cup starting in 2026 will have 12 groups of 4 instead of 16 groups of 3 - there are similar opportunities for collusion in the final match of a three-team group, and no easy fix.