2784

It’s stupid. Could you imagine the losers of the NBA or NHL semi-finals getting together to figure out who places 3rd? Ridiculousness.

2785

Definitely beginning to close. Up front and even in the midfield attack they may be OK for a bit. But Belgium’s ability to counter so confidently is based on putting a lot of faith in that stout back line of Kompany, Vertonghen and Aldeweireld, and they’ll all be in their mid-30s by 2022. Hard to see any of those three on the back line then, so that’s a huge ask for the national side to replace them all. Not saying it couldn’t happen, but that’s the task in front of the Belgium team management going forward.

2786

I know. I find it kind of crazy. I mean, my son and I watched it. And there was some good play here and there, but I cannot imagine the NBA or NHL doing that–geez, the NHL owners hate letting their players go to the Olympics for goodness sake–or Heaven forfend, the NFL. These players are assets to the owners of their teams. Seeing them run about in a match like this must set the owners of their teams teeth on edge.

I think the same thing about all-star games though. I think they are just dumb and a waste of time. But…you know…money.

-xtien

2787

OTOH, bronze medal still means something, so?

2788

Tue, but the circumstances are different, right?

Typically in the Olympics (but not always) the competition is ranked based upon a single event. When I make my downhill ski run, I’m in contention for a gold medal. Two other people beat my time, and I win the bronze. Which is nice. But they’re not saying “OK, we’ve decided the top two. Everyone back up the mountain and we’re going to have you all go again for a bronze medal.”

Obviously, not always the case. Sometimes in multi-tiered judged events competitors enter the final day of competition knowing that gold or silver is out of reach.

2789

There is a ton of counter evidence for this. Any team sport, hockey, basketball, volleyball will have the same. Many scored or timed events may lead to a situation where a competitor knows that first is out of reach, especially one like gymnastics or figure skating where there is a degree of difficulty modifier for maximum score.

So while it may not hold for every sport, there is a significant number which have competitors going for 3rd place, knowing that is their best outcome.

2790

In the words of Ray Gillette:

R- And I only took Bronze.
A- So…you lost.
R- Yeah I came in third!
A- Yeah. Which is last.
R- Which is THIRD–
A- Last.
R- IN THE WORLD!

-xtien

2791

Never said they didn’t require skill - on either side. But free throws require skill, and I wouldn’t want to decide a game based on a free throw contest.

It’s a tragedy any time a team sport decides a winner based on a one on one skill.

2792

Understood, but not the point I’m making, which is: playing specifically for third rather than for first, and knowing that when you enter a specific leg of a competition, sucks in the great majority of cases.

(adding to the suck-factor: being world class athletes, and also being world class athletes who at one point believed fairly late into the competition that they might be competing to win it all.)

2793

The best moment of this match was when Deir beat the goal keeper by chipping the ball over him, heading towards goal. And then came running a Belgian defender from out of the frame, doing a dive and kicking the ball at the last possible second to prevent the goal. Beautiful.

2794

I wouldn’t necessarily say they require no skill. They definitely require skill. And a good deal of study, as Mary Pickford suggested in the AAR after his successful match. He was clear that it required research and preparation in a way I had not imagined before. It kind of sounded to me like a baseball catcher who really knows what each hitter is going to do, and signals his pitcher thusly. Which I found pretty cool.

I’ll say it is thrilling to watch. But that doesn’t excuse the fact that they are deciding a game based on playing a different game. A bunch of running at the keeper and him doing a combo of prep and guessing is not the same game. It’s just not. They might as well roll out a clay pigeon launcher and some shotguns and do a skeet shooting competition to determine the result.

I am freaking loving this World Cup. But that shit makes me crazy. Because the NCAA Basketball Championship would be played until the end of time before they gave up. Overtime and overtime until they dropped. And as I said way above, not resort to some dumb dunking contest or a game of H-O-R-S-E.

I can’t stand it.

-xtien

2795

My son and I both went nuts about this. It was a beautiful moment.

-xtien

2796

It’s not though. There’s no skeet shooting during the game if there’s a foul on the player within the box. You do a penalty. ChiTownBluesFan had the better analogy in that it’s more like holding a free-throw contest, since free-throws are a part of basketball and happen if there’s a foul when shooting or going to the basket (or if the team is over its foul limit). Similarly in football, you have penalties.

So why is it not a good way to just keep going until players drop, like in basketball? Because again, just like with Ice Hockey, basketball has limitless substitutions, you can rest your players during the game. You can’t do that in football. One of the things measured in a match is the endurance of these players. But there’s a limit to that, you have to stop at a certain point.

I quite like that it comes down to one-on-one skill. The teams had their chance and couldn’t resolve it. Now it’s down to a dramatic showdown like in a Western movie, or an overly dramatic Bollywood movie where both the hero and villain throw away their guns so they can decide it mano a mano.

This also has the positive effect that in extra time, especially when there’s no golden goal, teams really give it their all. They put everything out there. These men have been running for 90 minutes, and then some more, and yet they still find the energy reserves to make lightning quick counter-attacks at the last minute of extra time, because they know that there is no more after this extra time. There’s no extended extra time, they can spend all the rest of their energy in trying to finish this match. There would be a huge damper on that if they knew that at the end of extra time would be more extra-time. Better to reserve your energy since it’s going to become a battle of attrition. Best save your energy so that the opponents start dropping first.

2797

Deciding huge games on penalty is pretty much the most idiotic, awful thing ever.

The time constraints I suppose make it a necessary evil in other knockout matches, but for the final? 15-minute extra time periods after the initial two, with each team getting a new sub for each extra time period, no golden goals.

So much better than any bad arguments for kicks.

2798

I could get behind that. It would work, since it’s the final.

2799

Based on something that is entirely arbitrary. The clock. Which in any sport is just a made up thing that people decide upon. It’s not like there’s a scientific calculation that players can only play ninety minutes plus fifteen plus fifteen and that’s that. What if the soccer gods had originally created the matches to last 100 minutes? Or 150?

In soccer, against a sport like basketball, it’s even more arbitrary, because they don’t stop the clock when play stops, so the ref just determines…uh…“I think it’s 6 extra minutes of injury time? Seven? Five? I dunno. Let’s go with Six.” And then the extra time goes until whenever. That’s dramatic, but infuriating at the same time.

It also invalidates your point.

If anything I’d change the substitution rules rather than rely upon a free-throw shooting contest. I was being deliberately hyperbolic by bringing up skeet shooting, but I’m not far off because while penalty kicks are an element of the game, and they often a huge factor in the final score, they happen as a consequence within the game. And there’s one. At a time. If that’s the game let’s just start with that and have five minute games. World Cup in a day. Done. Boom.

As an end-game factor it’s just, “We’ve played this beautiful game for an hour and a half…meh…let’s just bang it in and see what happens to decide who wins.”

-xtien

2800

And @triggercut made my point better and more succinctly. As usual.

-xtien

2801

I mean…penalty kicks just aren’t the same game as the soccer going on between the lines during the match proper. And that’s what’s unique here.

In baseball, when you go to extra innings, it’s about pitching, hitting, defense, and running. In football in overtime, it’s about defense, blocking, tackling, passing, running, tactics. In hockey, it’s about puck movement, defense, goaltending, and shot efficiency. In basketball, it’s about passing, defense, ball control, shooting, and getting the best shot.

Baseball, softball, football, basketball, hockey, tennis, golf…when all of these sports go to extra time or tiebreakers to decide a winner, in all of those sports, the fundamentals of the competition played to a draw still come into play.

Only in soccer’s major championship events do they set aside the defense, tactics, running speed and pace, passing, and ability to make a shot from a variety of angles and trajectories, and instead just make it a very basic shot against a single goalkeeper. I won’t deny that it is exciting to watch, but imagine the tension of a World Cup final in it’s fourth extra time period, in which all the factors of a regular time match are in play?

2802

It doesn’t invalidate the point that you have to stop at a certain point and can’t just keep going until someone wins, just because the exact length is a bit fuzzy on the edges because of injury time. The length can be whatever, like you said. It could be shorter or longer, but the important thing is that it be consistent, so players know what to pace themselves for. The difference between a 92 minute match and a 96 minute match and a 98 minute match isn’t that much, but taking on another 60 minutes would be a much bigger deal.

If you did it during the knockout rounds before the final, you’d be punishing the team who got into a super-long match, making it less likely they’d recover in time for their next round against an opponent who happened to have a 90 minute match.

But yeah, I liked the change in the 94 world cup onward that made it so that the injury time/stoppage time wasn’t as fuzzy as it used to be. It’s not relevant to the discussion about adding more extra time halves though.

But I do love the idea of making extra time halves being added in the final though. It would make the final feel extra special too.

2803

It wasn’t always this way - but TV (and gazillionaire players) won’t let it happen in the modern age:

Another typical feature of English failures at major tournaments over the past 50 years has been losing on penalties, but this was never going to happen in 1966. If Geoff Hurst hadn’t scored twice in extra time and the scores had stayed level, a replay would have been played the following Tuesday evening. And if the replay finished as a draw? The World Cup winners would have been decided by a lottery.