Why should adding the point total at the end of a group phase or season defeat the purpose of a match?
But, more pertinently, why is having a winner justified if a team isn't able to overcome its counterpart?
Axm wrote:To me and many others out there who follow a sport which don't allow tie's, allowing that is equal to allowing an incomplete conclusion. If you enjoy the respectfulness of saving face for your team or the opposing I can understand the sentiment, it's a polite and romantic concept, but in the end that doesn't tell you who the better team is.
Plain and simple, it's a lie.
And for the point total's it's basically perpetuating that lie. If you have to tally a total of combined points mixed between playing OTHER teams then you are essentially saying that nothing else matters but the ability to shoot the ball into the goal no matter which team you play. Might aswell get the best keepers and strikers of every team, line them up and have at each other one by one until one team has the most goals. This ofcourse would be ridiculous and defeat the point of the real game. So why determine the best team or qualifying teams based on one single aspect of the game? The sport and it's fans deserve to be respected with the knowledge that one team played the game better then the other. Rather than one team scored more than "X" team because of scheduling or bracketing or any other circumstantial reason like weather, missing players etc
I'm betting more often then not, people complain that "X" team played only the harder/better teams in a season and so "that's why they didn't make it this time.." or vice versa etc. You end up making all sorts of excuses for your team based on some top executives decision who's probably "corrupt", "biased" or an "idiot". I know this has got to be true because it happens in other sports aswell, just they don't have fucking tie's to add to the mayhem of "what if's".
Nahovil wrote:
I'm not sure fans deserve to know what team is the best (I'm not sure what you mean by deserve), and if they are disrespected (?) by the fact. Perhaps, we see it as less fan-centered. I regard it as other than pure entertainment, insofar as they're not competing for viewer pleasure (even though how famously pleasing it is). Maybe it is related to the uncertain nature of the game and its rules. Because Association football is so free that it, for instance, basically allows a ball and the players to just stand still from kickoff until the final whistle, no rules (without addressing social norms) condition your course of action, in that sense. Since the course of action is less determined, this, probably, allows for teams to actually play "better" than the opposition without outscoring them, through possession, chances created, etc - sometimes even losing a match (which is clearly illusory, since, objectively, you play better if you fulfil the game's outscoring-the-opponent objective).
Nahovil wrote:I'd say the main difference in these opposing views is that of a qualitative vs quantitative measurement. Watching football, people, quite subjectively, qualify the way teams play and how the matches generally look or looked like to them, often using the scoreline's quantification in parallel and not as its superordinate.
Nahovil wrote:I guess that, at the end of the day, determining who's best or worse is either not as important or rather not always just decided by one single occasion and only by outscoring a single opposition (counter-intuitively, we constantly hear how better a team played despite losing). Perhaps the need to hierarchize is exacerbated in North-America's cultural environment, if I may put it like that.
Axm wrote:Yes you may because it is. ;) Like I explained above, we simply don't have time to pussy foot around it. I understand the concept of not determining a winner on a per-match basis but to Americans this seems like a waste of time. Especially in American Football, it has a low amount of games played per season because the players are literally killing themselves and wont have much time left on earth after being diagnosed with brain trauma and paralysis from the neck down.
Nahovil wrote: I see. Well, soccer has seen an unprecedented rise in the US over the past few years, viewership, attendance numbers and practitioners included (can't bother finding the numbers). In Japan's case, I've read, by people living in Japan, that football, regarding practitioners, has surpassed baseball for a lot and a while now, while maintaining a shared attendance with baseball.
Axm wrote:In Japan's case again, by living here over 5 years total and in a major city (around 4th largest in Japan) being in the public school system and constantly asking Elementary-High School level kids, having plenty of Japanese adult friends, having a Japanese wife who tells me so and attending the game I recently went to.. Soccer is still very much 2nd place to Baseball.
The popularity has risen and does keep rising but Baseball is still far larger in both actual players at the school level (among boys) TV viewership, fan attendance and public opinion.
And I saw that clearly in the game I went to which was a national top competing level team with apparently some very good players, yet I saw lots of empty seats and ticket prices were rock bottom. 1000 yen(8.5 euro) and I was sitting in the center more "premium-ish" seats.
Yokosuka wrote: I really thought France was out, what a liberation. Respect to Ireland to play the game unlike too many teams in this Euro. Sad to have had to match this country to pass.
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