[HN Gopher] Barbados 4-2 Grenada
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Barbados 4-2 Grenada
Author : thazework
Score : 105 points
Date : 2023-03-24 14:56 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (en.wikipedia.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (en.wikipedia.org)
| a4isms wrote:
| This is hardly the first such weird outcome for a match that
| reflects a larger strategy of advancing in a tournament rather
| than simply attempting to win the match. It has been an ongoing
| scandal that teams collude to fix world cup matches during the
| qualifying rounds to ensure they both get a favourable position
| in the knockout rounds.
|
| That is considered cheating in soccer, but if you look at a sport
| like cycling, it is common for "rival" teams to team up and work
| together to chase down a breakaway, just as it is common for
| "rival" members of a breakaway or echelon to cooperate to beat
| everyone else.
|
| Why is one "match-fixing" and the other "the beauty of the
| sport?" Nothing more than expectations.
| [deleted]
| felipelemos wrote:
| This was not a match fix, and it is not considered cheat,
| although you could say it is unsportsmanlike.
| bigodbiel wrote:
| Technically it is match manipulation by most association
| regulations, even if not for financial gains. But it has
| always been part of the meta-game in such competitions,
| though this case was too extreme!
| Kon-Peki wrote:
| > although you could say it is unsportsmanlike.
|
| I don't think anyone rational would agree that it was
| unsportsmanlike.
|
| The situation was very clear, if they won by a single goal
| their season was over. The goal to make it 2-1 occurred in
| the 83rd minute and they didn't adopt this strategy until the
| 87th minute. In those intervening 4 minutes they attempted to
| score and restore their 2-goal lead.
|
| There are other examples of locally detrimental behavior that
| aims for strategic advantage, such as the intentional walk in
| baseball.
|
| Or that sometimes in football/soccer a team will
| intentionally kick the ball out of bounds to stop play
| because of an injury to a player, and the other team responds
| afterward by throwing the ball in to the other team or
| kicking it out themselves.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| This situation wouldn't be considered unsportsmanlike
| because of "locally detrimental" behavior _per se_ , but
| because of the angle-shooting.
|
| Your examples are well established parts of their games.
| Intentional own goals are not.
| notahacker wrote:
| I'm not sure the fact they tried to win legitimately for a
| few minutes _before_ resorting to something the opposition
| couldn 't stop them from doing to exploit a loophole in the
| rules makes it sound _less_ unsportsmanlike...
| a4isms wrote:
| Cheating, unsportsmanlike... The world is full of things that
| are legal but considered odious. Ultimately, if a sport
| becomes dominated by winning-at-the-expense-of-fan-enjoyment,
| it gets into trouble, so either the rules need another bug
| fix, or the sport evolves so that fans come to accept the
| behaviour as part of how the game is played.
|
| In cycling, fans consider the wheeling and dealing within the
| peloton of who works, who doesn't work, and who actively
| disrupts the work as part of what makes the sport
| interesting. In soccer, fans protest and throw things onto
| the field when two teams play, one scores a goal, and then
| for the rest of the game both teams pass the ball around
| without trying to do any more scoring.
|
| Is it cheating when both teams cooperate but simply
| enterprising use of the rules when one team attempts to score
| an own goal and the other team is forced to defend both
| goals?
|
| Regardless of the fine print in the rules, the larger issue
| is what the fans expect from a soccer match.
| Lio wrote:
| True but cycling fans _would_ consider it unsportsmanlike
| for a rival to attack when the GC leader is taking a piss
| or has a mechanical breakdown, even though that 's
| perfectly within the rules.
| notahacker wrote:
| A football match is a one on one competition between two teams.
| If they cease to compete, it ceases to be a competition.
|
| The equivalent isn't a couple of cycling teams collaborating in
| a multi-team race because they believe the peloton/echelon at a
| particular stage of the race will ultimately improve one their
| members' chances of success later in the race, it's a team
| involved in a pursuit race deciding to ride as slowly as
| possible to let the weaker team win for strategic reasons. I
| presume this is frowned upon too...
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| It sounds like you misunderstand professional football
| _profoundly_. You 're thinking of the sport people might
| enjoy playing. This article is about two businesses
| participating in a payout event.
| toast0 wrote:
| > The equivalent isn't a couple of cycling teams
| collaborating in a multi-team race because they believe the
| peloton/echelon at a particular stage of the race will
| ultimately improve one their members' chances of success
| later in the race,
|
| It sounds an awful lot like a couple of football teams
| collaborating at a particular stage of a tournament because
| it will ultimately improve their members' chances of success
| later in the tournament.
|
| Although, this particular case is different in that both
| teams were incentivized to win, just that one team needed to
| win by two, so with the game near the end of time, and a
| weird two points for ovetime goal rule, it made sense for
| both teams to deliberately score in their own nets at
| different points.
| notahacker wrote:
| > It sounds an awful lot like a couple of football teams
| collaborating at a particular stage of a tournament because
| it will ultimately improve their members' chances of
| success later in the tournament.
|
| Yes, if you _completely ignore_ the point I made about
| collusion invariably meaning the matches themselves cease
| to be competitive (whereas a cycling race with riders
| sacrificing themselves for teammates ' benefit and all
| kinds of tactical shenanigans between teams _absolutely
| does_ have multiple participants willing and able to take
| all the points off any rider that isn 't trying to win),
| and ignore the much closer cycling analogy (a race where
| one side doesn't race) you snipped off the end of the
| sentence. With sufficient willingness to dismiss relevant
| context, you can make pretty much anything sound like
| pretty much anything else. I don't think the Disgrace of
| Gijon and your average cycle race with multiple teams
| jostling for position _looked_ equally competitive to
| sports fans or _felt_ equally intensely competitive to the
| participants, and I don 't think any cycling fan that
| enjoys the anticipation of seeing when riders will stop
| conserving their energy in the early part of the race and
| who the tactics will favour would feel the same way about a
| team deliberately losing a head-to-head pursuit race for
| the sake of future matchups ...
|
| Fans aren't objecting to _strategy_ , they're objecting to
| the lack of any competitiveness or skill involved in a head
| to head contest where sides collude or one side
| intentionally throws. (This particular game's a little
| different from two teams actually colluding and was
| probably amusingly crazy for the last three minutes, but
| still, there's not much skill in scoring unopposed in your
| own net)
| dogma1138 wrote:
| It's not uncommon in many football (soccer) leagues because of
| the points system and the fact that it's far easier to force a
| tie in football than most other sports unless it's the finals.
|
| Teams might force ties or even loose on purpose to hack their
| ranking for various reasons including to either face off or not
| face off against a specific team at a future stage.
| realworldperson wrote:
| [dead]
| dzonga wrote:
| the underlying story in this is incentives determine behavior.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| s/determine/encourage/
| whateveracct wrote:
| They are definitely one thing that does
| dfxm12 wrote:
| Talk about incentives... In the NBA, the commissioner could
| fine a team for resting players. This was because of a game
| where a team, the San Antonio Spurs, which was full of older
| players and was doing well enough in the standings, wanted to
| give their older stars a rest due to the back to back schedule,
| but the league didn't want this. The Spurs were incentivized to
| rest their players & avoid injuries because it's a long season.
| However, the game happened to be on National TV and the league
| and its media partners are incentivized to have both teams'
| stars on the court!
|
| See also, tanking (which is really hard to define) for a better
| draft pick. It's funny to me to accuse bad teams of losing on
| purpose...
|
| https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2735734-nba-reportedly-p...
| pmontra wrote:
| Or possibly cheating the Balance of Performance in Le Mans
|
| https://www.foxsports.com.au/motorsport/le-mans-a-
| question-o...
| jl6 wrote:
| > Although the Barbadians' own-goal was highly unconventional,
| FIFA decided not to penalise the team because they were playing
| optimally under the circumstances.
|
| The right decision. Unlike the artificial dullness of the
| Disgrace of Gijon, it sounds like the Barbados - Grenada
| situation prompted some thrilling, if chaotic, goal scoring
| attempts. Grenada were attacking both goals and Barbados were
| defending both goals! It sounds like some kind of chess variant.
| notahacker wrote:
| It might have done, for the three whole minutes the sides
| played that way after one of them cheated by doing this
| extremely boring and uncompetitive thing
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZlqfhLwBnE Unfortunately I
| don't think any footage of those minutes is publicly available
|
| But FIFA's been unusually consistent in handing out bans for
| deliberate own goals for strategic reasons in other contexts,
| so I'm not sure why Barbados got away with this one. Fixed
| matches and mass brawls can be pretty entertaining to watch
| too!
| mabbo wrote:
| I wonder if one could create a really fun variant this way. One
| team guarding both nets, one team trying to score on both.
| Switch roles after a goal or some number of minutes.
|
| Then let's add some extra fun: one goal is worth two points. So
| how much better do you guard that one? How much more strongly
| do you attack that one?
|
| Strategies would be fascinating.
| madcaptenor wrote:
| See also the Disgrace of Gijon
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disgrace_of_Gijon). This is
| between West Germany and Austria, the last match in a four-team
| round-robin group in the 1982 World Cup. Before this match it was
| clear that if West Germany won by 1 or 2 goals, West Germany and
| Austria would both advance; otherwise one of those teams would
| advance along with Algeria. You can guess what happens: West
| Germany scores a goal and then both teams stop trying. Since
| then, in the World Cup the two final matches of the group start
| at the same time.
|
| This is probably why the 48-team World Cup starting in 2026 will
| have 12 groups of 4 instead of 16 groups of 3 - there are similar
| opportunities for collusion in the final match of a three-team
| group, and no easy fix.
| ianbooker wrote:
| That is something different, since Algeria could not change
| anything in the game at Gijon. That what makes it disgraceful.
|
| In Barbados 4-2 Grenada, both teams still had the opportunity
| to act, albeit in unforseen and seemingly strange ways.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| Just spit balling, one fix could be to just skip the group
| stage and go right to a big knockout stage, ala domestic cups.
| That seems too obvious/simple though, so I'm sure there's some
| reason why they don't do it this way. Maybe they want every
| country to have a minimum number of games...
|
| Having a longer group stage will probably make these situation
| less likely as the best teams will pull ahead, but I don't
| think we want the players to play so many more games.
| dylan604 wrote:
| There's not enough money made when you eliminate teams like
| that. You just eliminated ticket sales and broadcast rights.
| The tournaments are money making efforts that just happen to
| entertain people that are fans. Most of it is an excuse for
| the organizers to get stuff. (yes, I'm very cynical)
| notahacker wrote:
| Going straight to the knockout stages means half the sides in
| the competition only play one game though, which isn't great
| for eager anticipation in those countries or travelling fans.
| Also increases the probability of big sides being amongst the
| sides going out early due to freak results when they're a bit
| rusty.
|
| The actual solution - playing the final games in a four game
| group simultaneously - removes most of the incentives for
| playing out draws (and means that a side that _might_ be
| knocked out if the two sides in the other game draw is busy
| trying to win their game rather than watching powerlessly
| from the sidelines)
| madcaptenor wrote:
| But the group stage won't be any longer - they're still
| groups of 4, so each team still plays three group games.
| However there might be more "pulling away" in a 48-team World
| Cup than in a 32-team World Cup just because there will be
| weaker teams in those groups for the strongest teams to beat
| up on.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| By making the group stage longer, I meant that a team would
| play each other team in their group multiple times.
| lazyant wrote:
| In chess, Grandmasters draws are terrible for spectators. Maybe
| they should penalize with less than 0.5 points or like in
| Linares, with cash or not inviting back.
| roussanoff wrote:
| A paper on incentive incompatibility of multiple round-robin and
| knockout tournaments: https://bpb-
| us-w2.wpmucdn.com/voices.uchicago.edu/dist/1/274...
| Waterluvian wrote:
| SBNation did a great little video on this:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbuD-6BbnQw
|
| I recommend the entire "Weird Rules" series from that channel.
| Not only is it amusing, but it's filled with examples of
| accidentally creating wrong incentives for your users-- er...
| players.
| mbauman wrote:
| I wish they'd just show the footage of the 3 minutes at the end
| of regulation time. They showed _some_ footage, but not what
| I'd think would be the most interesting parts!
|
| I think the only online footage of the game is here, just
| including clips of Grenada's goal at 83 minutes, Barbados' own
| goal, and the golden goal:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZlqfhLwBnE
| bigodbiel wrote:
| thank you, that was really funny
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