Soccer Rules Question (and, why are the Americans so bad? - dmc)

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Someone please show me an instance in football where by a group has been decided by drawing straws .

The whole idea is laughable, has never happened and never will. It just doesn't come to that. Even if it did, in this day and age I seriously doubt that if the sitution did arise it would be dealt with in that way. It just wouldn't be stood for. But, it's absolutely pointless taling about it because it just doesn't happen.

 

Not drawing straws, but flipping coins. Italy vs. the Soviet Union EC '68, semifinals.

 

Semi-finals? I take it penalties did not exist in those times then...

 

Nope, it didn't. In the finals against Czecho-Slovakia, Italy and them had a 0-0 game, so it was replayed the day after, in which Italy won. No penalties back then either.

 

As I say, it wouldn't be allowed to happen these days.

 

Sorry, but they would NEVER change the rules in the middle of a tournament. NEVER. The lawyers would have a field day. The rules state what they state. If they couldn't resolve the deadlock via goal difference, goals scored etc, then they would draw lots. Nothing to do with penalties and extra time because we are talking about group results, not an individual game.

They would never schedule a playoff because the logistics would be a nightmare and, it's not in the rules. End of story. Nothing to do with 'this day and age'. In fact, in 'this day and age' it would be even more likely that they would stick to the rules because there is so much more legal action going around these days.

 

Haha no group since the World Cup started in 1930 has ever been decided by drawings lots. Can you imagine it if it did? The response would be huge.
To be honest dude, debating what would happen in the event of such an unlikely situation is a waste of everyones time.

 

I don't think they implented groups until '58, '50 at it's very earliest. 30, 34, and 38 were playoff only.

 

I'll be the first to admit that having a tie to the point of goal differential and goals scored is an unlikely scenario. Especially considering no one would care to break the tie between a 3rd and 4th place team in a group, as they are both eliminated anyway.

However, they only play three games, and given that the most common scores in soccer are things like 2-2, 2-1, 1-1, 1-0, 0-0 - it's not a stretch to say such a thing is possible. While there are certainly exceptions, most teams will neither score or give up more than 6 goals in the first round. Espcially in the example that I cited, where a team finishes the first round 1-1-1, in most of those cases the goal differential is going to be pretty darn close to zero. Maybe +/- 2 at most. Given the propensity of low scoring matches, I also don't think it's a stretch to say that two teams could also finish with the same number of goals. Is it so hard to imagine two teams playing to a draw against each other, and then each team winning and losing a game by a single goal - or even the same score - like 2-1?

I think that the fact that it hasn't happened yet is more surprising than if it had happened already. I think the biggest thing they have going for them is that they play three games. With three games, ties in record are unlikely, with it only being common with two teams finishing 2-1 (in which case you'd be trying to determine who's first and who's second) or in two teams finishing 1-1-1 (in which case you'd be determining who was finishing 2nd and 3rd. I suppose it's theoretically possible for all four teams to finish 1-1-1, but again, that's a long shot.

 

Ok, let's dispel the myth that football has a propencity for low amounts of goals. I can't think of many matches this WC that have ended 0-0 and there's been loads of goals.

The reason it hasn't happened yet, is if a team goes into the last match knowing it need a result ot go up, the match is RARELY a draw as the will top win for both teams in huge and the game is really open.

 

Um... I specifically said:

So while I did mention 0-0 as a common score, I by no means said they all were like that. Or are you arguing that the others on that list are uncommon as well?

 

A 2-2 isn't exctly a low scoring game.

 

By the standards of most North American sports 2-2 is a low scoring game.

In NHL hockey the average is just over 6 goals per game.

In baseball it is much higher than that. The lowest run producing team in baseball is averaging 4 runs per game this season and the top nearly 6 runs per game - thus if you take average total runs in a game it would be somewhere between 8 and 12.

Lets not even start on basketball.

I don't know U.S. football well enough to comment on the average number of scoring plays per game but I am willing to bet that it would be much higher than four.

 

But we're not talking about North American sports.

 

The point is that it hardly helps to convince North Americans that low scoring in football is a myth if you are using 2-2 as an example. If you look at the World Cup so far the average number of goals per game is somewhere between two and three which most North Americans would consider strong evidence that football is a low scoring sport.

 

Well then you have to change your mindset and realise that football is different to your own sports.

I could say that your Ice Hockey isn't as good as rugby because you don't get 42-56 scores or more scores. You can't treat how many points/goals are scored in a game as indicative of how good it is...

 

I never said that high scoring is necessarily better. In fact if you take basketball for example - I can't stand the sport because there is way too much scoring for my taste.

The fact is that many North Americans don't like football and they commonly claim that it is because it is too low scoring for their taste. That does not mean that either they or the sport should change - just that football will likely not be as popular in North America as it is elsewhere at any time in the near future. I really don't see why everyone seems to get so fired up about this.

 

My point was that when dealing with scores that are generally 3 or less, it's more likely to get the same number of goals scored, especially when taking a very small sample size - like only 3 games per team. If teams averaged 4-6 goals a game, then there would be less likelihood of getting equal number of goals scored.

I wasn't in any way blasting soccer for being "low scoring". I was trying to say how it's possible to get teams tied in goal differential and goals scored. And when you're dealing with typical scores of 0, 1, or 2 there isn't as much variability in the results.

 

I got what you meant Aldeth, my post was a general one rather than straight at you dude.

I just don't understand Americans thought process. I don't mean to be funny by that, I'm just honestly confused. They say that football isn't for them because there aren't enough goals. Yet they're the first to admit that the amount of goals scored in a sport isn't any indication of how good it is. So there must be another reason why they don't think it's a good sport yet everyone else in the world does.
To me it's obviously because the Americans are pretty crap at it, and America is a country of winners. I remember some time ago with Ian Woosnam won the US open and about 80% of American papers didn't even cover it, and those that did give it an inch big column in the middle out of the way somewhere. America loves winners. If Team USA had more success on the international stage even more oeople would get interested in it and the MLS would prosper.

Which leads us nicely back to precisely why the US are crap at footie. The reason being that they're not too good at it, so it's a viscious cycle for you.

Viewing figures in the US for the WC are well up on the last one though. And the US did pretty well in 2002. That's a good sign.

 

Are you kidding? After the Masters the U.S. Open is the MOST POPULAR golfing event in America, and the winner gets tons of coverage no matter who it is. Geoff Ogilvy won it this year - he's Australian - and he was all over Sports Center and even on sport talk radio shows this past week. It's ridiculous to say that the American media outlets don't cover it when someone who isn't from America wins it.

I do not doubt that more people would watch the WC if the U.S. was better at it. I think most people are like that. I'm more likely to buy tickets to attend a sporting event in the years my team is doing good, as opposed to years they are doing bad. It's not as fun watching a baseball game when your team is 20 games out of 1st by the All-Star break.

I think the bigger problem is people don't understand soccer, because there is so little coverage of it. Most people don't know a damn thing about soccer other than when you kick the ball into the goal, you score 1. They don't know about the nuances of the game because it's never on TV. We don't "get" soccer like the rest of the world does. I'm sure most people in the world can't watch a baseball game and know, based on the situation, that the pitcher is more likely to throw a curve or breaking ball, as opposed to the fastball, given the count on the batter. Or most people can't predict times for a screen pass on a(n American) football field based on the down and distance. It's the intrcacies, subtleties, and nuances of the game that Americans don't understand with soccer that we do for other sports. I think we like other sports better because we understand them better.