So a lot of visitors have been coming to CV to read Mark’s post on the Physics of Beckham. What’s more, the rest of the blogosphere is thick with commentary on the World Cup — 3 Quarks Daily has Alex Cooley reporting and Jonathan Kramnick grumbling, the Volokh Conspiracy has David Post enthusing and Todd Zywicki critiquing, and Crooked Timber has been hosting rollicking open threads. Who would have thought that people were interested in soccer? It’ll never be as popular as string theory, but there’s definitely some interest there.
Actually, philistine American though I may be, I love the World Cup. And I myself was doing Beckham blogging long before it had become fashionable. The World Cup is everything the Olympics should be, but isn’t. It’s a spectacle of true international importance, featuring a sport that people care about even in the off years, full of compelling personalities and a rich history, in which a country can’t dominate simply on the basis of a superior entertainment-industrial complex. And I have no desire to change the rules of the game to suit my uneducated predelictions. Even though basketball is my sport of choice, I have no problem with the paucity of scoring; just as I can appreciate the ebb and flow of the scoreboard and the drama of big runs and quick turnarounds in hoops, I can also savor the exquisite rarity of goals in soccer, with the attendant ebb and flow of anticipation as scoring chances are mounted and frustrated. I have no problem with the offside rule, nor would I want to see the goal size increased. Nor am I one of those postmodernists who would turn the whole thing into hockey. I don’t even have any problem with the idea that the world’s best team has a star named Kaka, or that the French think they can compete by fielding exactly the same players that won the Cup eight years ago.
That is to say, I am not a hater. So let’s nevertheless admit that there are a couple of things that everyone, from the most clueless newbie to the most knowledgeable expert, can admit are dramatically wrong with the game. And, perhaps, easily fixable.
The first is the refereeing. Not something Americans can feel culturally superior about, as the refereeing in the NBA or NFL is just horrible. But still, the quality in the Cup thus far has been atrocious, and not just because the USA was jobbed against both Italy and Ghana. (Against the Czechs they got what they deserved.) For one obvious thing, there is only one guy out there, expected to police every hidden elbow and maliciously-aimed foot? The notion is absurd on the face of it, and it’s hardly surprising that the difference between an innocent tackle and a game-altering penalty kick is basically a coin toss. (Has anyone before me noticed that the home-field advantage is really quite considerable in these games? They have? Okay, good.) And then you give to these subjective judgments an absolutely tournament-altering power — red cards not only send off a player, but keep him out for the next game, and force the team to play shorthanded for the rest of the match? The situation ensures that the amateur-thespian histrionics after a touch foul for which the Italians are infamous will always be amply rewarded. It’s not an admission of weakness to try to improve this mess somehow; surely nobody wants NFL-style reviews of the calls, but there must be ways (more referees, more latitude with the severity of sanctions) to make the games more fair.
But the real travesty, which I am absolutely convinced must be roundly despised by everyone in their right minds, is the shootout. I mean, come on. Some of the world’s best athletes run themselves ragged for over an hour and a half, with half the planet hanging breathlessly on the result, and it’s decided by a few free kicks from the penalty mark? That’s just insanity. The first World Cup final that I watched live (on TV) was Brazil-Italy in 1994, featuring a scoreless tie after regulation and extra time, the excitement of which was thoroughly destroyed by the shootout decision. This is embarassing, and has to stop. Especially because there is a completely obvious solution: let them keep playing! Sudden-death overtime. Some folks might worry that such an overtime period would just drag on forever. So, fine, let it! It won’t really go forever, because the players will get tired (and their number will be declining due to red cards!), and the ensuing sloppiness will make goals increasingly likely. And the excitement level would be amazing, adding to the drama of the world’s greatest sporting tournament rather than completely undermining it.
So come on, FIFA, do the right thing. Adjust a few knobs here and there on this World Cup thing, you may actually have something.
Nice post Sean!
I agree with most of your remarks , especially about atrocious refeereing but I am afraid your suggestions , well intended as they are , are not useful. First, about having two referees inside the pitch. I personally dont like it , because I see no need for it. Most controversial callings are about offside positions and those are mostly a responsability of the assistant referees,so having another guy inside is not going to help. Regarding infamous divings , hand touches inside the box and miscellaneous stuff the solution is to have physically fit referees who can be close to the ball all the time. I concede it is still a controversial topic and for example , UEFA is studying the possibility of doing something about it. Regarding the elimination of the PK shootout I must say is not going to happen ,and for very good reasons. A football match is an extremely demanding physical activity. A player loses between 5 and 10 pounds of body weight in a 90 min game so extending the game without time constraints is exposing the players to high risks of injuries and other physical damages, it is like asking that a boxing match keep going until one boxer is knocked down!. Besides , in a short tournament as a WC championship the time between games is usually shorter than in a regular tournament so having a team playing lots of overtime and 3 or 4 days later matching them with a team who played just 90 min is very unfair. From my experience, hating the shootout is mostly an american thing .People who only watch football every 4 years usually complains also. Most seasoned fans know that a shootout may be cruel but it is not unfair, both teams have the same chances. It is a necessary evil, the last resort. Some people even root for a draw in order to watch a shootout due to the high excitment it generates (mostly when your favorite team is not involved). Finally, shootouts are part of the history of the World Cup and they help to add a sense of drama and legend to the game. Most football fans remember famous shoouts, like France -Germany in 1982, France-Brazil and Germany-England in 1986, Argentine-Italy in 1990 and Argentine-England in 1998 among others ,and I think most fans and even FIFA agree that removing the shootout is depriving the WC of one of its most magic and emotionally intense features.
Feh.
I want to see them crawling on their hands and knees pushing the ball with their heads if need be. Nobody stops baseball games after 12 innings to have a home run contest. There aren’t shootouts in playoff hockey. Soccer is the only game I’ve ever seen where the world championship can be decided by something almost completely unrelated to the rest of the game.
I’ve wondered what adding a half-court violation might do to the game, too. It’d get rid of all those annoying goalie passes.
Dear Sean, there is something cultural here.
The referee’s mistakes are one of the best parts. How could people argue for days or years between the matches, without those? How could all the “Bar Sport” in every italian little town survive, if not feeding and serving drinks to all the customers and fans that go there only to complain about the referee and the fate?
And the penalty kicks vs the golden goal/sudden death? Come on! Everybody hated that when it was introduced to please the americans. Even the below-average soccer fan feels his/her heart stopping when your team is at the penalty kicks. It’s a bit more intense than, I don’t know, the 10th inning. And where else do you find a way to keep tens of millions of italians completely frozen for tens of seconds?
By the way, I don’t know what you are talking about with that thing of the italians being infamous for pretending life-threatening injuries at every light touch. This must come to you from last week’s disappointment…
Did I say which country I’m from?
All the best.
Give me a break. Referee’s mistakes are a highlight of the game? Why not make all the calls completely random? Believe it or not, there would still be things for the fans to talk about even if the referee’s didn’t make as many mistakes.
As for the notion that the shootout is somehow more riveting than sudden-death overtime would be, or the one that soccer players are too delicate and fragile to keep playing until someone scores a goal — these Romans are crazy, as Asterix once said.
Have the PK shootouts come back this year? I could’ve sworn that sudden death OT was in play in 1998 and 2002.
You think play should continue for ever? Have you ever played football? Running constantly for two 45-minute halves, with a 15-minute intermission? Without breaks for TV commercials?
You think all falls are fake? Ever been kicked in the knees? Repeatedly? With zero protection?
As for multiplying the number of referees, Americans may enjoy watching a group of referees debate amongst themselves while the game is at a standstill, but it wouldn’t fly anywhere else in the world.
It’s a subtle concept, but the fallibility of the refs is actually part of the game. Football, like life, is occasionally very unfair.
I always find it amusing that Americans are so unbelievably incompetent at this game, and yet they think that it’s riddled with flaws, that even “the most clueless newbie” can see.
Relax, Alfredo. I have played the game, I don’t think all falls are fake, and having more than one referee does not imply endless debates between them. And not everything is America vs. the world.
Ease up, Alfredo.
Anyhow, it doesn’t make much sense, in my opinion, to demand that the game keeps going “forever”. Not only for the very important reason of the player’s physical integrity, but also for spectacle’s sake. PK shootouts can light up a lot of excitement in otherwise boring games, as thoroughly demonstrated by yesterday’s Ukraine – Switzerland. Third, the quality of the game decreases and keeps decreasing as the players get tired, as exemplified everytime a game goes into overtime. A posible solution could involve giving both teams a lot of extra replacements?
I just watched France score on an utterly atrocious call, after Italy won the other night on something even worse. No wonder people flop all the time in this game if this is the result.
It’s pretty pathetic that multiple games at this level get decided by such histrionic crap. Get another ref on the field at the very least.
france won deservedly, what atrocious call are you referring to?
It’s always strange listening to americans talk about football, as I’m sure it would be if I were to pontificate about american football or baseball. My instinctive response is ‘hey, football doesn’t belong to you – don’t mess with it’. But of course that’s silly.
Incidentally, what’s the coverage of the world cup been like over there in the states? Here in england it’s pretty much the only thing in the papers (and I don’t just mean the sports section).
The free kick on France’s second goal. France might have deserved to win, but I didn’t see anything that looked like a foul on that play.
I really think a second ref could help. That way you have one person ahead of the play and one behind it to get a better view on various contact situations.
For the record: This time, there is no sudden death/golden goal in overtime anymore as there was in the last two tournaments. I must admit, I do not fully understand this decision, probably, it is to remove an element of randomness at least for the overtime period.
The issue of the referee is probably more subtle than you think: For most of this year’s tournament I was very impressed by the performance of the referees and what they actually got right in so short time! Regarding your suggestion, it is one of the most important aims for the referee to keep the game flowing balancing the rules with not too many interruptions of the game. Ideally, like a systems administrator, you don’t notice the referee at all. This woul d significantly be hurt if there was a team of referees that would have to coodinate or the decisions would be open to review.
I think, everybody agrees that penalty shootout is not really “fair”. But it is part of being a successful football team to be able to score the penalties after running for more than 120 minutes and under extreme psychological pressure. So, why not? In earlier days of football, a game with a draw was just repeated (a number of times) and eventually, a coin was thrown.
I don’t think, either Ukraine or the Swiss would have been able to score if you had given them more time. 120 minutes of an extremely boring game did not suggest they had any ideas of how to get into the other team’s box.
You wanna talk about Bad Refereeing? Don Denkinger, with his bad call that simply gave the 1985 World Series to the Kansas City Royals, still takes the cake in my book.
Penalties are a pretty rubbish way to end any match. Except, that is, when that match involves England.
😉
I’ve always wondered what would happen if they made the following adjustment for overtime. After every 10 minutes of overtime, each team has to remove a player from the field. This would prevent the game from going on endlessly, as eventually it will guarantee someone is going to score, even if it ultimately comes down to the two goalkeepers, mano a mano!
Whoa. I was Sean’s student. I was also a huge footie fan. And I have no idea Sean knew so much about footie.
Anyway, they did think about letting the players play forever until they tire off and make mistakes. The problem is that, the players will be so tired after the game that there will have no more energy for the next game.
A proposed possible solution is that after regulation time, you allow extra subs, on top of the usual 3. Then the idea might work…
Anyway, I was rooting for Spain. Too bad the thespians kicked them out.
Sorry if I don’t sound “relaxed” enough. But this is a case of America vs. the rest of the world. Football is arguably the most popular sport in the world. (Not soccer; this is a British anachronism, short for Association Football, that Americans use to distinguish the game from what everybody else calls American football. Nobody else calls it that, not even the Brits.). It’s played and loved with a passion in its native Britain, in the rest of Europe, in Central and South America, Africa, Asia, and Oceania. It’s played in Russia, and Israel, and Palestine. Everybody gets it. Even the Germans get it. Everybody, that is, except the US. The US doesn’t get it.
Football is played on dusty patches of ground in African villages; on Brazilian beaches, beautifully, at sunset; in muddy, rain-sodden fields by the mines in Wales; and although it’s beyond my experience, I’m sure dirt-poor Asian kids have found places to make magic with a ball.
Americans think it’s a game fit only for small boys and girls, lovingly and condescendingly applauded by the celebrated soccer moms, a demographic category recognized by car manufacturers and politicians.
Every four years the World Cup rolls around, and it’s such a big deal that even Americans are aware of it. They find that a local team has qualified, and they think they are ready for the big time, until of course their team gets roundly beaten up by some dirt-poor Africans who actually know how to play the game. You would think that Americans would say “Whoa. We suck at this. Maybe we should pay attention and learn how to play this interesting game”. But no. Americans being Americans, they don’t think there’s anything wrong with them, but with the game, of course! It should have instant replays, and a team of referees, with voting procedures and measuring chains, no doubt. It should go on, and on, and on, until the players drop exhausted to the ground. And above all, there should be none of this effeminate play-acting when you fall to the ground. And the referees, well! They obviously hate America. They hate our freedoms.
Look, in the real world, you don’t like the ref’s call, you throw something at him. When referees need police protection to leave the field, they learn the rules, OK?
And yes, even the best referee will occasionally make a mistake, and will have to lie low for a week or two, until the enraged fans find something else to gripe about. Like hunger.
Football is played in a park, with jackets for goal posts and no referees or linesmen, and as many players as you can pull together on a Sunday afternoon. There is no way America’s desperate housewives or their desperate husbands can understand the game. There are no playbooks, no diagrams, no measuring chains, no instant replays, no hierarchy of coaches, no glossy satin uniforms, no clipboards. Just a bunch of ordinary geniuses with a ball, improvising.
Americans don’t know how to improvise. This is why their armies, the most technologically sophisticated armies in the entire Local Group, are helpless against some barefoot guerrillas. If Americans stopped thinking about how to change the rules of football, and actually tried to understand the game, they might actually begin to understand guerrilla warfare, and save their lives.
The best thing about the PK shootout is that it’s a wonderful illustration of Nash equilibrium in game theory:
http://www2.owen.vanderbilt.edu/mike.shor/courses/game-theory/docs/lecture05/MixedSoccer.html
But to have “no problem with the offsides rule” is downright unamerican!
Alfredo, it’s funny to watch someone spend so much time crafting a response which contains so few actual points. Seriously, quit with the sweeping generalizations: they make you sound like a total idiot.
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JJ, I don’t think Germany and England met in 1986 world cup. You
are probably referring to the 1990 game(which I agree was a great game)
I also agree with Aaron that the foul which led to France’s second goal
looked iffy. Italy has been very unlucky in penalty shootouts in 1990,1994
and 1998
Alfredo sputtered: “If Americans stopped thinking about how to change the rules of football, and actually tried to understand the game, they might actually begin to understand guerrilla warfare, and save their lives”
Oh, my aching sides!
For the record, in Australia, Canada, America, Ireland, South Africa, and New Zealand, association football is called soccer, and football means something else, which depends on the country and sometimes the region. Britain is a notable exception.
Americans are not new to bad refereeing, or their dire consequences. Instant reply rules do not apply in all games.
And to extrapolate from Americans’ ill understanding of the soccer game to their military prowess, or the lack thereof, is a long stretch.
As for football being native to England, I thought the game originated in China. But I must admit that the game has gone through many iterations except that it is still basically played with the feet, and the brain.