The U.S. men’s national soccer team is going to the knockout stage of the World Cup, not because it defeated — or even tied — Germany on Thursday afternoon. The Americans are headed to the round of 16 next week because of the capital they accrued over 11 compelling days and the series of events that unfolded more than 1,000 miles apart on the final day of group play.Sorry, World, but that is bullshit. And I don't even care if it helped America. It's not American style to lose but advance. We won a game, we tied a game, and then we lost a game, but still we advance. Why not just give every country in the world a "cup"? A big cup... of lameness.
They lost the game, 1-0, but won the right to remain at soccer’s quadrennial jamboree by virtue of a superior goal differential over Portugal in Group G, the so-called Group of Death.
The Group of Death?! The death I see is the death of rationality and the whole concept of a game.
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Actually, it's worse than that. Had Ghana beaten Portugal by more than two goals, Ghana would have advanced on goal differential, even though (a) it would have had the same record in the group and (b) had lost the head-to-head matchup with the U.S.
So stop paying attention to it, Ann.
A .500 record being good enough to make the playoffs?!?
What do they think this is, the NBA? The NHL?
Oh come on Ms. Althouse. The US won a game, tied a game, and lost a game. Portugal lost a game, tied a game, and won a game.
How are you going to decide between Portugal and USA--both teams having the same record and playing each other to a draw? Would you have a rubber match with sudden death playoff between Portugal and USA to decide who gets the nod?
Or would you follow the existing system which settles such matters by counting up goal differentials?
Or would you just settle it all with a coin flip?
They advanced because they beat Ghana and tied Portugal not because they lost to Germany.
Arguments out of ignorance are so tiresome. Normally I have to head to the comments for that.
Thank you! This is an excerpt from a post I wrote yesterday on my blog. I think it makes your point.
"Only in Soccer is advancing in a tournament determined by obscure things like, how many chapters did Benito Mussolini’s great, great granddaughter (I don’t actually know if he has a great, great granddaughter, and I didn’t care to look it up) read last night about the mating habits of migrating birds in the Northern Hemisphere. If she read more than three chapters, the US team advances, if she read less than that it means they didn’t advance. That is unless Uruguay happens to lose to Easter Island by less than 2 goals while wearing Richard Nixon masks."
http://www.rotten-core.com/soccer-stinks-just-commie-sport/
Eh, that doesn't bother me, and I say that as someone who finds soccer equaled in boring only by baseball. Double-loss elimination is a common enough tournament style. Advancing because we only lost once, and won the tie-breaker against another 1-loss team isn't thrilling, but it's hardly bullshit.
LOL. Under the rules in effect the USA qualified to move ahead. They did better overall than the other teams.
Odd to see Althouse, who supports "following the law," complain about the US moving forward by complying with the rules.
USA USA USA.
One of the great things about the World Cup is you are allowed to be a nationalist.
You can tell how much it sucks by the thousands of people skipping work in NY and watching in the bars, restaurants, outdoor venues, etc. Much like when we were in Sicily during a big European tournament and everything stopped for the game.
The top two teams in each group advance. The US was one of the top two teams. Yes, their advance depended on the results of the Portugal-Ghana game happening at the same time. That sort of thing happens all the time at the end of regular season baseball.
We won a game, we tied a game, and then we lost a game, but still we advance.
Not an unusual or unexpected event. In 4 of the 8 brackets, the second place team was 1-1-1
I wonder what the incidence of post traumatic brain injury is but that is not a subject for discussion. I've seen very serious leg injuries from soccer. The whole anti-football thing is a joke.
Oh boy, here it comes Ann. You are soooo wrong and they will be along here any minute to tell you how and why
For someone who hates soccer, you sure pay a lot of attention (and an inordinate number of posts) to it.
Really, if it bothers you so much, don't pay attention to it. It is easy to do.
You just sound like a crank bent on ruining others' enjoyment of the most popular sport in the world.
The World Cup is only once every four years. Suck it up and let other people enjoy themselves.
Oh, come on, Ann..it is totally american. Ever heard of the term "backing into the playoffs"?
Don't get me wrong futball, as your president calls it, is great. If you are a child not old enoughto play baseball, basketball, football, hockey, lacrosse, rugby, gin rummy, poker or black jack.
This isn't that confusing.
The Packers lost to Chicago(?) some years back, but because Arizona(?) beat Minnesota(?) the Packers got to the playoffs, even though they lost their last game.
The only team I remember for sure is the Packers in the above scenario, but it did happen: they lost, other teams lost, so the Packers advanced.
Don't know the rules of the game but assume the same would apply the same to any country ....or did we threaten drones....
Nonsense.
In the World Cup, all teams in a group play by the same rules to achieve the same goal. In its competitive group, the US just happened to do it a bit better than its closest rival for second place. Two pretty good teams go home -- nothing lame about it.
In the U.S., winning-by-losing is also common. In some seasons, teams with losing records can easily make it into the NBA playoffs. Candidates can (deliberately) lose the popular vote but win the presidency with a majority in the Electoral College.
If the Brewers make the playoffs via the Wild Card, will you make the same statement?
Why is everyone freaking out over this? The Spurs lost many games on their way to the chapionship. The only major professional sport in America that doesn't allow teams to advance in the playoffs after a loss is the NFL.
Think of the group stage of the world cup like a playoff series in baseketball, and the next stage of the world cup is like the nfl and is single elimination.
Okay I guess I am full of crap about the Packers, but is it not true in the NFL a team can lose game 16 and advance to the Playoffs?
Hasn't it happened within the last 10 or 15 years?
Same concept with the WC and I don't see a problem with it.
Sorry Packer fans didn't mean to get anybody excited or angry with my lousy season recall.
Well, I guess your closing comment just goes to show you know no more about this Ann Coulter. There are 32 teams in 8 gropus, 4 per group. The top two teams in each group advance to the next round. The rankings in each group are based first on points, with 3 for a win, 1 for a tie, and 0 for a loss. Then ties are broken by goal differential. The US finishes second based on points and goal differential. It is pretty simple. Your advancement is based on the aggregate of your peformmance, not on any one game. Seems pretty fair to me.
In sports, there's a regular season. To advance to the playoffs you don't have to win all your games, just more than the other guys. How is this different?
(I can't believe I'm defending soccer).
It's just rules of engagement, not "soccer." Single elimination probably doesn't make sense since the best team could have a bad day. Playoffs with multiple games or round robins are a better test of who is the best.
It gets even worse. Apparently the baseball team that won the world series last year, the Boston Red Sox, lost their last game and yet still advanced to the playoffs--and that was just one of 65 losses and they were still allowed to advanced to the playoffs! The team that won the Super Bowl, the Seattle Seahawks, lost their penultimate game and yet still advanced to the playoffs. The San Antonio Spurs, who just won the NBA Finals, lost 20 games! Bullshit, bullshit everywhere!
Daniel Drezner had a nice blog post about soccer yesterday. A major reason Americans don't like soccer, he said, is that Americans believe the team that plays best should win, and often in soccer that doesn't happen. Americans believe--much more than others--that people control their own destiny. And they like games that reflect that.
laugh at soccer as much as you can ... while you can. US'll be Mexico soon, then we'll talk.
;)
The group stage is a mini regular season to determine which 50% of the teams advance to the knockout stage. And you play the games knowing that in advance, it's not a surprise. Not so hard to understand, unless you want to be like Ann Coulter.
"The Packers lost to Chicago(?) some years back, but because Arizona(?) beat Minnesota(?) the Packers got to the playoffs, even though they lost their last game."
I remember when there was no Super Bowl and then when it was invented, it was decried.
I also don't like, in baseball: the All Star Game, inter-league play, and the "wild card" business post-season. I don't think there should be 3 divisions. I remember when there was only the National League and the American League, and the 2 teams that were first at the end of the season played each other in the World Series (which shouldn't be called the "World Series," which is obviously bullshit, but longstanding grandfathered in bullshit).
I know you people love Althouse the Sports Crank. That's my best character, right?
They asked us to watch the game on our projection TV at work over lunch yesterday. I was struck by how unprofessional the filming style was, how boring and dull the on-the-fly editing, compared to American football production values. It's just a dull-looking sport, and I say that as someone who never watches American sports except under duress, and actually played soccer (poorly) as a child.
And why can't the World Cup run elimination tournaments? Win or die, dammit. This seems set up to give every national team a little reality-TV narrative arc, so that they can jingoistically justify their attention on something so objectively boring.
the logic behind starting with a group phase instead of play-offs is to better avoid two strongest teams meeting and eliminating early.
That's why 1st team from a group A meets 2nd from group B, and vice-versa.
and remember. You'll be Mexicans soon, and you'll be singing different tune then.
tim maguire said...
A .500 record being good enough to make the playoffs?!?
Factory Yoyo said...
Oh, come on, Ann..it is totally american. Ever heard of the term "backing into the playoffs"?
The US was playing in the World Cup. I thought those were the playoffs. No? Did they just move on to the Solar System Cup?
Iconochasm said...
Eh, that doesn't bother me, and I say that as someone who finds soccer equaled in boring only by baseball. Double-loss elimination is a common enough tournament style.
Name one other professional sport that uses it.
Portugal lost to Germany 4-0. We lost 1-0. Even if goal differential weren't a tiebreaker, we played Germany better than Portugal did, so we advance.
RE: "I know you people love Althouse the Sports Crank. That's my best character, right?"
That's only because you don't do Althouse the Naughty Librarian nearly enough.
I love "Althouse the Sports Crank"! I am glad I wasn't sipping my coffee when I read it. Maybe the World Cup authorities didn't want be hurt the players' fragile sense of self, thus promoting everyone and giving medals to all. Now- Off to the Border-to-Border bike trail to ride from EMU to UofMA2!
You can understand Americans and their President's pride when you remember that they didn't win that, something else made that happen.
"I also don't like, in baseball: the All Star Game, inter-league play, and the "wild card" business post-season. I don't think there should be 3 divisions. I remember when there was only the National League and the American League, and the 2 teams that were first at the end of the season played each other in the World Series (which shouldn't be called the "World Series," which is obviously bullshit, but longstanding grandfathered in bullshit)."
I love this, and think that any sport with a long regular season should adopt it. The sample size is long enough when you play 162 games. This counts for all American sports except football.
It is soccer that best exemplifies this. In most countries, every team in the top division plays every other team twice, once at home and once on the road, and the team with the best record wins the title. No playoffs, like the AL and NL used to be, and I wish still were. So, if Manchester United wins ten more games than any other team, they win the title, and can't lose it by having one bad day in a playoff like you can here.
But, in an event like the World Cup, you have 32 teams and only a month to decide a champion. There simply isn't time to play everybody even one time, or anywhere near that. There are better formats (knock-out style is almost always unfair), but it's okay. And it is a lot of fun.
It sounds like your beef is with any tournament awarding mediocrity, not just soccer. And I'd say it's American franchise owner's that push us away from this because they love playoffs and the money it brings in.
I don't know about "Althouse the Sports Crank", but I'm totally on board with "Althouse the Baseball Purist." Teams have 162 games to prove they belong in the World Series, why does a team that failed to prove it in those 162 get another chance to prove it in 7? Why are the Boys of Summer playing in November? November is Football. And the designated hitter rule! Yes, by all means, let's keep a slow old guy around for a few more years!
Best reason to root against the United States in the World Cup, heard in a meeting yesterday: If they win, they'll make a movie about it.
That's my best character, right?
I always liked your "Meade" sockpuppet. You had a lot of people fooled with that one. Some people still haven't caught on.
"I remember when there was no Super Bowl and then when it was invented, it was decried."
Then you'd love European-league Soccer. There are no playoffs, every game counts.
If the U.S. had had the exact same result in every game, but played them in reverse order, no one would be confused about the result. It's not that hard to understand a round-robin tournament, but most folks aren't trying.
Both the German and US teams would have advanced yesterday with a draw. To their credit, both teams did their best to win rather than playing for a beneficial result.
So, no shame in the way the US team made it to the elimination round. They earned it.
"I know you people love Althouse the Sports Crank. That's my best character, right?"
Sure, we like (not love) it. You score, we score, everybody gets a "cup." But it's a little predictable.
Not your best character, anyway.
I prefer the ones that are a bit more creative and authentic -- Althouse the ruthless Fisker, Althouse the BS detector, Althouse the My-Dinner-with-Andre-style conversationalist, Althouse the stubborn diva who will not admit error.
Its not a game. Its a match. as my co-worker pedantically told me.
It's not un-American to lose but advance. Last year in the NFL alone, The Indianapolis Colts and New England Patriots celebrated playoff spots after losing their respective games.
It's more than okay if you find soccer boring or you just don't like the rules, but claiming that it is not American style to lose and advance just doesn't follow.
The obvious solution to the problem of advancing with a 1-1-1 record would be to give the teams more games in the first stage. You'd be happy with a longer World Cup, right? :)
P.S. Have you seen Ann Coulter's post on this topic?
Freder:"Suck it up and let other people enjoy themselves."
LOL
Says the totalitarian folks who told us this: "Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your divisions. That you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zones. That you push yourselves to be better. And that you engage. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed."
But go ahead Freder, keep lecturing Ann on leaving others alone!
"It's not American style to lose but advance." So quaint!
It's not American style to let foreigners in illegally to overwhelm the Rule of Law either.
Nigeria, Algeria, and Greece also advanced with 1-1-1 records. Portugal and USA both beat Ghana 2-1, but Portugal lost to Germany 4-0 while we only lost 1-0.
How is that the death of rationality?
In the concept of this game, the six games in each group are one contest. In single elimination, only two games would need to be played to winnow four teams to two.
Across all eight groups, that is 48 games instead of 16. During the qualifying rounds, 820 games were played.
All the people watching the US-Germany game were watching the wrong game, as the outcome of Portugal/Ghana was the one that mattered.
It seems to me that in this case the system worked pretty well - the two teams who had the best three games advanced. (Unless someone wants to argue that Portugal had a better three games than the US.) I've played sports with a lot of different tournament formats. Any format with round-robin groups - including any sport with "leagues" - has the same type of problems, but this is what is almost always chosen. Get over it, Alhouse sports-crank persona.
I know you people love Althouse the Sports Crank. That's my best character, right?
Right up there with Men in Shorts Crank.
btw, I think the comparisons to getting into the playoffs while losing your final regular season games are bad. The World Cup is already the playoffs, I think (completely soccer ignorant, really). No team in the NFL, once they're in the playoffs, advances while losing.
A fan of American professional sports, and she complains about strange rules?
Ann Althouse said...
I also don't like, in baseball: the All Star Game, inter-league play, and the "wild card" business post-season. I don't think there should be 3 divisions. I remember when there was only the National League and the American League, and the 2 teams that were first at the end of the season played each other in the World Series...
This is why you are a professor and not a businessman.
What Original Mike and Unknown said.
BTW, I'm not a fan of inter-league play, either, but I get why they do it. And like Crash, not a fan of the designated hitter.
My biggest one, though, is with the NHL. Hockey where you can't play pond hockey, just seems wrong.
They should do it like the College World Series. Two-loss elimination with winners and losers brackets.
Germany beat Portugal and the US beat Ghana. The winners play each other. Germany beat the US. The losers play each other. Portugal beat Ghana. So Germany advances and the winner of the US and Portugal advances. No fucking ties.
Again, this is a sport where a midget like Messi is a world class player. He's a foot and a half shorter than LeBron.
Can't let this one go, Ann. You wouldn't either, I think. It's not that complex, and works the way global soccer stuff works worldwide.
They put the tournament together like a group of eight little leagues (four teams each) that then play each other in a set of three games. Head to head victories mean nothing, as teams are judged like soccer teams are judged in their regular league play. This makes perfect sense to the global soccer fan. A lot of this is because you will often get draws at the end of games. A win is three points, a draw is one point, and goal difference is the tiebreaker. GD encourages teams to continue to fight hard to score through the entire game, making it more entertaining. This WC has certainly borne that out.
This structure will generate a blast of games like the ones we have just experienced - two unbroken weeks of competition. This structure also generates a gobsmacking amount of $ for FIFA.
The top two teams in each group by points/goal diff then play another tournament to determine the overall winner. This phase has no draws, and the loser leaves the tournament.
The US game yesterday was like the last game of the NFL season, when everyone is looking to see what other teams have done to determine who is going to make the playoffs.
@MadisonMan - the only way the Ghana-Portugal game matters is if the US doesn't win or tie.
And if you consider the World Cup to be the playoffs, the analogy to the NFL breaks down. At that point, the NBA/NHL is a better analogy; you play the regular season to determine the elite teams for the playoffs, at which point the champion is determined by a series of games. Those teams play a series of games and almost every team loses at least one.
The international soccer organizations aren't going to adopt any rules/procedures to appeal to American sensibilities about sport.
@Madison Man - Now that the group stage is over teams will only continue playing if they win. This is known as the "knock-out" stage - win, or go home.
These purified modern games are too winner take all. The Roman Colosseum was a more entertaining league: Animals eating the wounded after a thumbs up or thumbs down signal from a beloved Emperor as final judge followed by traditional rioting between the loser's fans and the winner's fans. Now that's entertainment.
"Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your divisions. That you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zones. That you push yourselves to be better. And that you engage. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed."
Did I say that? Don't think so. And since I didn't, what the hell does this quote have to do with the conversation at hand.
If the Ghana game had been 3rd on the schedule instead of 1st, the USA would have gone to the next round by winning a game in the 85th minute, with an exciting goal.
Having said that, the game yesterday was a good but not great match. Our boys stayed on the field with a top three team, and, although we were out played, it was not a mismatch. This team of ours has guts. Bring on Belgium, they are not as good as Germany and I think we'll beat them. I believe.
(just for the record, I enjoy most sports including American "football" and hockey, but excluding curling, bowling, & track/field.)
Self-esteem can be granted. However, self-confidence is a product of achievement. The former without the latter sabotages character development and engenders an expectation of entitlement. Perhaps that's why civilization sponsors corruption.
It's not unsporting to lose and advance. Many people correctly point out that it happens frequently for NFL teams entering the playoffs. However, it does go against the ethos of Americans. We don't root for a tie. We don't give a shit about Portugal. We win, preferably, and we win most of the time regardless of anybody's desires. When we lose, we suck it up and decide that we don't care about that game/country/issue anyway.
Watching men's soccer is the closest equivalent for women to men's watching women's beach volleyball.
I too remember when there were 16 teams in MLB, no DH, no divisions, and the top two teams only went to the World Series.
The owners remember as well. They remember that by mid-August there were only 2 or 3 teams that had any chance to get to the World Series and the other teams' attendance dropped. Now that most of the teams still have a shot until mid-September and there's 8 teams (or whatever) going to the post-season, they sell a lot more tickets and more people watch the games on TV (driving ratings).
I saw a golf game once. They played for four days. One guy won even though he didn't win the final day. Crazy.
Best reason to root against the United States in the World Cup, heard in a meeting yesterday: If they win, they'll make a movie about it. T'ha T'ha T'ja
The betting pool is lookin' mighty fine for my husband with the system of advancement. The tourney will get even more BS if they have soccer shoot-outs to declare a winner. At the moment, they just call a draw.
And by the way, the German goal was clearly a winner's cup goal !! Pure talent.
The World Cup nothing on lameless when compared to college football!
The whole season devoted to playing in a glorified exhibition game, which you qualify for by scheduling a bunch of cupcakes at the beginning of the season.
Quick! Who won the last Orange Bowl?
The correct answer is no one gives a &#$@!
The Olympic basketball tournament runs the same way. In 2012, there were two groups of six teams and the top four in each group advanced to the knockout round.
And look at the Wisconsin badgers basketball team. Last season they couldn't win the regular season title AND lost their last game of the season. They lost in the 3rd round of the Big 10 tournament and they still got into the NCAA tournament. That's BS, win or go home baby.
I watched more than twenty minutes of a recent soccer game so I know what I'm talking about. There was no scoring. You could see the athleticism of the players and the efforts they were making, But it was all for nothing. Great skill and strenuous effort go into making sure that nothing consequential happens.....The game is a metaphor for life. Once in a great while someone scores, but that's just as often a result of happenstance as of skill. Also a metaphor for life. Advancing to the next round because of an arcane and flukish scoring system---another metaphor for life.....Soccer is a metaphor for life and that's why it sucks. Football is more fun because it's a metaphor for warfare, and war is more interesting than life.
After 6 weeks in Brasil, I left on the 11th of June, the day the cup started. It was great to be on an overnight flight with the seat next to me in economy unoccupied. Usually those flights are packed, but few people were leaving the country.
In the weeks leading up to the cup, if you were not a soccer fan it would not have been real obvious the cup was coming, at least in Buzios, where no games were being played. Every day of the year, in restaurants and bars, the TV's generally show nothing but soccer, so not much difference. Most people I talked to would ask me my opinion about soccer, then move the conversation on to something else.
After years of travel to Brasil, what still amazes me is the game of futvolley. Volleyball without using hands, in the sand at the beach. Those folks are masters.
One of the reasons Brasilians grow up such masters of dribbling is the youth game of futsol. They use a very small ball on a very small field or court. The constraints of space make dribbling in traffic a premium.
Ties are unamerican. Making the playoffs with a mediocre record is unamerican.
Last year's Packers had a tie, finished the season 8-7-1, and made the playoffs. Damn cheese-eating surrender monkeys! Go back to Europe!
(I'm only being absurd to illustrate the silliness of Althouse's position--I'm a Packers fan).
Oh, and everyone gets a cup...except England, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Ghana, and 11 other teams, many of them good, who went home in total defeat.
The 'lost their last regular season game and made the playoffs' argument ignores that the World Cup IS the playoffs for International Soccer, in that the teams have to qualify to get into the field.
Seed the teams 1-32, go single elimination all the way, and be done with it.
...no really, be done with it. The knockout rounds are just starting, and I'm already sick of hearing about soccer for another month.
Name one other professional sport that uses it.
The World Baseball Classic, which is actually the best analogy and closer parallel than NBA, NFL, MLB, NHL, etc. But you may also want to look into how the Olympics competes for several of their team-based events.
Like the WBC, the World Cup is an international sporting competition featuring athletes grouped by nationality. It's when the best of all the various soccer leagues around the world leave their clubs and compete for national pride.
You're not going to find a clean parallel to the NFL or NBA, where very few of the players are actually from the city which they purport to represent on the field. But you do find a cleaner parallel in the World Baseball Classic, which oddly enough, Americans have also been unable to win.
They lost the game, 1-0, but won the right to remain at soccer’s quadrennial jamboree by virtue of a superior goal differential over Portugal in Group G....
You people are way overthinking this. To the true soccer fan, a superior goal differential over Portugal in Group G is all the reason you need to go out on the street and beat the shit out of someone, which (as more enlightened Europeans and Latin Americans know) is the only way to make soccer enjoyable. Yay America! Win, lose, tie, whatev--just give me something to hit!
USA Beats Germany, 0-1, advances in World Cup.
The rules are clear. The initial round is a contest to see which two of each group of four have the best record after they play each other.
The World Cup is great as sporting event, and as a tool for surfacing all sorts of parochial troglodytic opinions - some entertaining (as in Ann Coulter's trolling) and others simply embarassing.
HAHA. The lefties are a little sensitive about the football aren't they?
Althouse Sports Crank is way beneath Althouse "this is bullshit" Crank in my character schtick Power Rankings.
Be happy it was decided on goal differential. If there is no goal differential, it's decided on a coin toss.
At least FIFA fixed the rules to require the last round of matches in any group to be played at the same time, eliminating the scandal that the last match be "fixed" based on knowing the result of the second-from-last match.
But nothing is more unamerican boring than the decision in the only world cup final final I have attended. 1994, Still nil-nil draw after 90 minutes of regulation and 30 minutes of extra time. For the first time, championship of the planet's most popular sport decided on stupid penalty kicks. (But with the unshaded Rose Bowl in the eighties that afternoon, it would have been inhuman for players and fans to have required playing on.)
Oh, please. It's a competitive event with the two teams with the best record according to predetermined standards advancing. The US had the second best record according to those standards.
It's pretty silly - make that very silly - to complain about a standard that has applied for decades because it doesn't comport with some nebulous "American style."
More importantly, soccer is an unpredictable game. For example, Spain, the reigning world champion was knocked out by Chile. A team that goes through like the US went through might very well win it all. That won't be the US, however.
"markbres said...
The rules are clear. The initial round is a contest to see which two of each group of four have the best record after they play each other."
All you guys explaining the rules. They aren't complex. They're just stupid. They are CLEARLY stupid.
"MadisonMan said...
USA Beats Germany, 0-1, advances in World Cup."
Gold.
There's never been a baseball team in a pennant race that lost on the last day of the season but made it into the playoffs because the other team lost more games at the end?
Or an NFL team in a tight race for the playoffs that lost on the last day of the season but made it anyway because they were ahead on the tie-breaker?
@readering: AMEN. Deciding world championship games with a shoot-out is an abomination. Soccer does it. Olympic hockey does it. It's an embarrassment. The sport is soccer. If the game is tied and you need a winner, then play SOCCER until somebody wins.
In a 2006 NCAA college hockey playoff game, Wisconsin and Cornell played 50 minutes of sudden-death overtime to decide who would prevail. 50-minutes of heart-in-your-throat hockey.
The game is SOCCER. If the game is tied, play
SOCCER until you drop. Shoot-outs are for pussies.
What I find ironic about this World Cup is, England, Spain, and Italy all were eliminated in pool play - not among the 16 best teams in the world.
Yet the top three professional soccer leagues in the world are in England, Spain, and Italy.
The game is SOCCER. If the game is tied, play
SOCCER until you drop. Shoot-outs are for pussies.
Shootouts were invented to make sports more TV friendly. Without shootouts, games can be extended for hours into overtime. If that game is being televised the station has two options when it goes into overtime:
A) Blow up their schedule, potentially for hours, to continue covering the game and piss off everyone who wanted to see the cancelled shows
B) Break away from the game, and piss off everyone who had been watching it.
I follow a couple of NBA and MLB teams. Don't get me started about my San Diego Padres (who are really the Chicago Cubs with the calendar permanently stuck in August--the month the Cubbies do their traditional "El Foldo".)
But you read the sports pages long enough and you'll see things like the fourth best team in the NBA's Western Conference (for much of the season, the Los Angeles Clippers) having a better won loss record than the best team in the NBA Eastern Conference. So the Eastern Conference team with the 5th or 6th best record in the NBA gets to play for the NBA Championship.
Well life's not fair--and in most professional sports you'll have years where one conference or division is head and shoulders stronger (or weaker) than all the other conferences and divisions.
Suck it up and enjoy life. Until other teams in the Western Conference of the NBA can figure out how to beat the San Antonio Spurs, it doesn't matter how much better they are than the best team in the Eastern Conference.
Thanks for illustrating my point @Curious George
"Big Mike said...
There's never been a baseball team in a pennant race that lost on the last day of the season but made it into the playoffs because the other team lost more games at the end?
Or an NFL team in a tight race for the playoffs that lost on the last day of the season but made it anyway because they were ahead on the tie-breaker?"
As I've tried to point out before, these comparisons are invalid. We are not discussing QUALIFYING for the playoffs. We are discussing ADVANCING in the playoffs.
The only thing dumber than World Cup soccer are World Cup soccer fans.
I don't think analogies to American sports are all that valid, vis a vis, making the playoffs. Supposedly, this is the playoffs.
An equally bizarre thing happened to US soccer a couple of years ago when Seattle lost their first game of the playoffs but were still in, won their second game, but were out.
Only "the international community" could come up with this.
"Mike said...
And I'd say it's American franchise owner's that push us away from this because they love playoffs and the money it brings in."
Push us away? Dude, playoffs bring in money because people want them. It makes casual fans fanatics. The owners are filling a want, not pshing people to where they don't want to go.
Well, except for idiot soccers fans, who are satisfied with low scoring games, play-off games ending in ties, and teams advancing based on what two other teams do.
". Without shootouts, games can be extended for hours into overtime. If that game is being televised the station has two options when it goes into overtime:
A) Blow up their schedule, potentially for hours, to continue covering the game and piss off everyone who wanted to see the cancelled shows
B) Break away from the game, and piss off everyone who had been watching it.
The correct Choice is "A". It's a playoff/championship game (regular games should just end in a tie). These games are being broadcast on a sports channel. Few viewers are going to bemoan missing the tractor pull scheduled after the game.
The hockey game I told of was televised. They showed it all.
"Push us away? Dude, playoffs bring in money because people want them. It makes casual fans fanatics. The owners are filling a want, not pshing people to where they don't want to go.
Well, except for idiot soccers fans, who are satisfied with low scoring games, play-off games ending in ties, and teams advancing based on what two other teams do."
Curious George, I agree, people want playoffs. Playoffs are fun, but they aren't great at determining who the best team is. It generally takes a large sample size to do this. That's my point.
When I said "push us away", I meant push us away from this ideal. I obviously didn't mean push fans away from viewing the games.
Also, congrats on calling "soccers" fans idiots.
"All you guys explaining the rules. They aren't complex. They're just stupid. They are CLEARLY stupid."
What a ridiculous assertion! If the point is to advance two teams with the best results to the next round given all possible outcomes, what would you suggest other than to do just that?
O-o-o-o. Let's send Portugal through because we like Ronaldo's girlfriend and they drank the most water. Yeah!
Most of the ire about this would simply have never materialized if the narrative would have been "The US made it to the loser bracket."
IMHO
"As I've tried to point out before, these comparisons are invalid. We are not discussing QUALIFYING for the playoffs. We are discussing ADVANCING in the playoffs."
Wrong. The comparisons are perfectly valid. You are confused because you are mixing up the different types of playoffs: knockout playoffs vs. round robin playoffs.
Effectively, all sports competitions are playoffs. In American professional sports, what we call the regular season are simply extended round robin playoffs. What we call playoffs (or postseason or tournaments) are knockout playoffs.
Knockout playoffs can be in single elimination form like the NFL or in best-of-something series form like the NBA.
The WC groups stages are round robin playoffs. When they get down to 16 teams, they begin single elimination knockout playoffs.
Now, I guess one can make the argument that WC finals should be all knockout playoffs so they have the feeling of American style playoffs with no backing your way into advancing in a similar fashion to losing on the last day of the regular season, but I would disagree with that argument.
Let's say you accept the parameters that the WC finals should be about 1 month long and have the 32 teams representing a decent cross-section of soccer playing teams from across the world, this format is probably the best.
First, it puts 4 teams together from various regions that don't typically play each other. Next. if you are going to travel halfway across the globe, it is a good idea to play at least 3 games before going home.
Maybe other formats could be better, but really, this 32-team month-long format is about as optimal a format as I can think of.
And seriously, I'm a format/structure nerd when it comes to sports. American football is my favorite sport, and the structure of the NFL regular season and playoffs adds to my enjoyment. (Whereas the structure of college football takes away from my enjoyment.)
I find it laughable that many baseball fans around here are criticizing the WC format, when MLB has the worst structure of any sports league I can think of: play nearly every day for 6 months. And not 2 hour game like soccer or college basketball. Or not even a 2.5 hour game like the NBA. But a 3 hour game, almost as long as an NFL game that only plays 1x/week, 16 weeks a year.
And is playing for 3 hours nearly every night for 6 months enough to decide a winner? But of course not. We now play a postseason with games on national TV that take 3.5 hours every night for another month.
Please defend this as rational.
I liked baseball growing up when I had free time. But now I have a job, a family, and the like. I only have time for one regular season (football) and a few the sports with reasonable game lengths when the stakes get meaningful (soccer, basketball).
The chutzpah of Americans complaining about a real sport, instead of one of their own (that nobody else plays) is palpable.
It takes four hours to play a one hour game of American Football. The players wear shoulder pads and tights. The teams are chosen not by free choice, money or merit, but a (socialist) draft system. The rules ensure that the whole game stops after a player is tackled. yawn.
I can't think of anything more boring, frankly, and, honestly, if you look at it rationally, American Football is Unamerican in the way it is run and played. And then these folk who love this boring sport, which requires a cast of literally hundreds of cheerleaders and marching bands to sustain itself, turn around and call soccer "gay" and "boring"?! Seriously?!
What I find ironic about this World Cup is, England, Spain, and Italy all were eliminated in pool play - not among the 16 best teams in the world.
Yet the top three professional soccer leagues in the world are in England, Spain, and Italy.
And if you look at the rosters of the leading teams in those leagues, they're full of international players. our American best players mostly play in England, Spain and Italy.
"Please defend [the MLB playoff structure] as rational."
No taker here. I like the old system (regular season champions play each other). Modern playoff systems devalue the regular season, which I don't like.
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