[HN Gopher] Own-goal football (2022)
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Own-goal football (2022)
Author : colinprince
Score : 134 points
Date : 2023-06-01 16:55 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (generalist.academy)
(TXT) w3m dump (generalist.academy)
| karmakurtisaani wrote:
| Adding to the discussion on the rules set in soccer, I've always
| found it bad design that the referee has only yellow and red
| cards for penalizing individual players. Especially the red card
| is a hard penalty, which leads to the referee having too much
| influence on the outcome, and to counter that, the referees don't
| like to give out cards too easily.
|
| Now, the consequence of that is for example that players fake
| injuries constantly, as they can't be reasonably penalized, but
| the faking might yield a penalty kick or a red card to the other
| team. However, it makes the game incredibly cringeworthy to
| watch.
|
| Contrast this to ice hockey, where the minimal penalty is a
| timeout of 2 minutes. It's enough to put your team in trouble,
| but you can recover by playing careful defence for 2 minutes. So
| if a player fakes injuries or otherwise behaves in a minor bad
| way, the referee can give them a 2 minute penalty - enough to
| punish, but not enough to skew the rest of the game.
| tavorep wrote:
| Those who dive can be penalized though. In the Europa League
| Final just yesterday a player on Roma got a yellow card for
| simulation trying to get a penalty call. Can the refs do better
| at catching these? Yes. But to say there's no recourse or it's
| not penalized is just wrong.
| linhvn wrote:
| If you fake injuries, or fall in the penalty area, you might
| get a yellow / red card. So no cheaties here, especially with
| VAR now in place.
| katamarimambo wrote:
| Considering how 'tanking' for talent acquiring has become a
| strategy in american sports, I hope at least we get to see this
| scenario with both teams trying to score own-tds/baskets/etc and
| fiercily defending the opponents goal in a match
| steveylang wrote:
| There's also the situation in American football where the team
| on defense purposely lets another team score a touchdown rather
| than stop them for a field goal, in order to have some time
| left to try to regain the lead. Also vice versa, where the
| player on offense will purposely fall before going into the end
| zone.
|
| This one though is at least somewhat of a double-edged sword,
| as it's not a 100% given that the team's kicker will make a
| field goal (probably around 90-95% success rate.)
| owlninja wrote:
| Or taking an intentional safety!
| bombcar wrote:
| Time management is a huge important part of American
| football; books have been written about the (often
| unintuitive) results:
| https://johntreed.com/products/football-clock-
| management-5th...
|
| The clock acts as an impossibly powerful defense that only
| comes to play for you after a time, and that can be
| exploited.
| permo-w wrote:
| is this because the bottom team gets the first draft pick?
| jabroni_salad wrote:
| Exactly. Look up 76ers "The Process" if you want to see a
| huge example of it. They spent 3 years losing to reel in
| embiid and simmons.
| barbazoo wrote:
| > Football has a lot of strange rules - like Ted Lasso, I still
| don't understand exactly how the offside rule works.
|
| Spoiler alert, he did figure it out in the end
| ghaff wrote:
| Every now and then, it seems as if some referees are a bit
| unclear on the details as well. (It is admittedly a bit
| squishier than when there is a hard and fast line on some field
| or court.
| buildbot wrote:
| It's always somewhat nonplussing (grammer?) when people say
| they are unclear on it. If you are past the last defender, on
| the opposing side of the field, when the ball is kicked to
| you, offsides.
|
| It's hard to get right though, which is different. Having
| both ref'd and played soccer, you absolutely need lineman
| watching the field closely.
| ghaff wrote:
| I was being a bit sarcastic. Obviously the refs know the
| rules. But it's fairly easy to get a bit wrong at the
| margins. I've reffed ice hockey by comparison and, while
| you may miss a call here and there it's pretty clear at
| least if you look at a slo-mo replay whether a call was
| right or not based on puck and skates position.
| toast0 wrote:
| Being somewhat familiar with ice hockey cause my kid
| plays, and having read the description of this offsides,
| ice hockey is much easier because you check position of
| the skaters relative to the line at the same time as the
| puck crosses the line. My kid's league has instant
| offsides, so you don't have to keep track of potential
| offsides, but you do have to allow otherwise offsides if
| the defenders put the puck in.
|
| Under IFAB law, you have to keep track of where the
| potentially offside player relative to other players is
| at the time that the ball is kicked elsewhere, which
| means having eyes focused in more than one place at once.
| Not an easy job.
| amatheus wrote:
| The player must be past the line of the ball for it to be
| offside too; it the ball is passed backwards or at the same
| line is not offside even if there are no defenders.
| glormph wrote:
| Still, I was surprised when someone told me the rule was
| "at least two opponent players between you and the goal
| line" instead of only one. I had never thought of the
| keeper.
| linhns wrote:
| My bet would be he hasn't fully understood it. Some of his
| sentences are clunky and messed up his football terms.
| paranoidxprod wrote:
| He started not knowing a thing about soccer, but ended up
| knowing at least one thing about football.
| smcl wrote:
| The offside rule gets far more attention than it deserves and
| in my opinion it's happened due to the increased popularity and
| quality of live televised football over the last ~30 years.
|
| To me the best place to start is to understand what the rule is
| trying to accomplish. It's designed to discourage a player
| hanging out by their opponents goal the entire game in the
| hopes that somehow their team can somehow get the ball to them
| and they'll have only the goalkeeper to beat (or whatever poor
| defender was tasked with tracking them) - "poaching" we'd call
| it in 5 or 7-aside games where there is no offside rule.
|
| How do you do that? Well you just try to make a rule that says
| "if you're inside your opponents half your teammates can't pass
| you the ball unless there's at least two players between you
| and the opponents goal line".
|
| It only becomes tricky to explain or understand because:
|
| - it is encoded within the laws of the game in a very specific
| way that's a little tricky to digest in its entirety
|
| - most people know some bits of it but only half-remember
| little details and try to explain all of that at once and
| confuse both themselves and the person they're explaining it to
|
| - some people think that the ball needs to be passed in a given
| direction, leading to (rare) situations where they're unable to
| explain an offside call or to incorrectly describe it as wrong
|
| - some try to explain it in terms of one attacking player being
| beyond one defender, forgetting that it's actually _two
| players_ on the defending side, one of whom is usually-but-not-
| always the goalkeeper
|
| - people try to include exceptions when they explain it (you
| can't be offside from a throw-in, for example)
|
| - local football associations try to tweak it to be more fair
| or to appease fans (but inevitably make it more complex and
| piss off fans). They might change it so you're offside even if
| you didn't personally receive the ball for example.
|
| - it is often explained to or by someone who has had a couple
| of beers and is attempting to demonstrate it by moving pint
| glasses or beermats around on a pub table
|
| - if you want to be _technically_ correct, it 's not just "is a
| player in an offside position" it is "is any part of an
| attacking player's body _that is allowed to play the ball_
| offside " (i.e. you can technically be offside of your head,
| legs, chest, ass are offside .. but if it's only part of your
| arm that's in a given position you're not offside)
|
| - etc
|
| Each added detail or half-remembered corner-case can make any
| explanation more convoluted and hard to understand.
|
| But for 99% of situations the sentence "if you're inside your
| opponents half your teammates can't pass you the ball unless
| there's at least two players between you and the opponents goal
| line" will suffice.
|
| If you want to simplify it as "... at least one defender ..."
| that's fine in most cases. A player on the attack who is trying
| to avoid being offside will just look out for the last
| defender, assuming the goalkeeper will be stood near their
| goal. A player who is attacking will play the ball assuming
| their teammates were onside unless they're obviously not. A
| player who is defending will keep an eye on the furthest-back
| defender - there will be a loud member of the defense
| coordinating this, telling them to move up or down the field.
|
| If you want to think about it in more detail, remember what
| parts of the body the attacker is allowed to touch the ball
| with.
|
| If you're watching a match in person, you likely won't be in a
| position to make call it in any more detail than that anyway.
|
| If you're watching on TV the commentators will break an offside
| call down in excruciating detail for you and show you lots of
| stupid graphics and slow-mo replays.
| waynecochran wrote:
| After years of watching my kids, I am not sure the refs always
| know what is offside either.
|
| Growing up I always made fun of soccer and considered it a game
| for uncircumcised foreigners, but I have to like it now because
| my kids play. The worst thing about soccer is that no one,
| outside the ref, really knows how much time is left in the
| game. That and flopping in the box to get penalty shots.
| [deleted]
| barbazoo wrote:
| They know the rule, the problem is just that it's sometimes
| hard to see where the players are relative to each other the
| moment the ball leaves someone's foot so there are false
| positives and false negatives. Tech and replays make it less
| and less of a problem but it takes away from the game in my
| opinion. It's becoming too techie.
|
| > Growing up I always made fun of soccer and considered it a
| game for uncircumcised foreigners
|
| This made me actually lol
| locustous wrote:
| > The worst thing about soccer is that no one, outside the
| ref, really knows how much time is left in the game
|
| This is also kind of a feature. Different kind of suspense. I
| don't mind it.
|
| > That and flopping in the box to get penalty shots.
|
| I don't like diving, but I can understand it to some extent.
| The ref misses a lot of the illegal contact.
|
| Grabbing, pushing, pretty much anything you do with your
| hands to manipulate another player is illegal contact.
| Shoulder contact is mostly fine and the generally allowed
| strength and positioning play.
|
| If you have someone doing subtle tactical fouls in the box
| (very common). The ref will probably miss it because it's
| hard to see the finer technical contact at 30-40 yards away.
| Then there's the safety issue. If you're a forward and you
| get plowed by a defender, it can be quite dangerous. There
| tends to be a size mismatch favoring the defender.
|
| So exaggerating contact to make sure the ref is aware that
| it's occurred is a counter to potential defender
| gamesmanship, or worse.
|
| I've never been able to do it, I keep my feet at even
| egregious fouls (really good balance) and consequently,
| despite probably hundreds of fouls in the box, I never get
| awarded penalties.
|
| But... I still retain a bit of appreciation for the divers as
| I know what defenders would be like if the threat of it
| wasn't there.
|
| Another common problem is the huge license keepers are
| granted with physical contact.
| gfunk911 wrote:
| In the NHL, you get 2 points for winning, 0 points for losing in
| regulation, and 1 point for losing in overtime.
|
| The obvious result (to everyone but the creators of the rule I
| guess) is that, if a game is tied near the end of regulation, it
| is best for both sides if the game goes to overtime. There are 2
| points available for a game decided in regulation, but 3 if
| decided in overtime. I assume both teams would sit quietly and
| wait for overtime if it were tolerated.
| bowmessage wrote:
| Why is that obvious? Why would a team want to allow their
| opposition to score any points at all?
| jfengel wrote:
| Because it could be you who gets the point.
|
| If it's tied near the end of regulation, your expectation
| value is 1. But if you and the other team wait it out and let
| it go into overtime, your expectation value is 1.5.
| pubby wrote:
| This one boggles my mind because broadcasters don't want games
| to go into overtime. A 3-point system where overtime win/losses
| are split 2/1 emphasizes winning in the final few minutes,
| which is exciting to both viewers and businessmen. Maybe one
| day they'll switch.
| thazework wrote:
| Unless there is a scenerio where one team really doesn't want
| the other to get even a point?
|
| Speaking of NHL and weird rules iirc there's an emergency
| goalie that can be pulled out of the crowd to fill in for
| either team.
| kenjackson wrote:
| That's only the case if neither team feels like they have a
| decided advantage before OT to win. Otherwise, you don't want
| the other team to get a point, because you're competing against
| them in total points for playoff position.
| throwbadubadu wrote:
| > Football has a lot of strange rules - like Ted Lasso, I still
| don't understand exactly how the offside rule works
|
| Aw, come on, you cannot start a soccer article with that :(
| thazework wrote:
| Previous discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35289875
| jefftk wrote:
| Here's a list I made of how reversing incentives might look for a
| range of games, including Soccer/Football:
| https://www.jefftk.com/p/playing-to-lose
|
| This was prompted by a conversation with Ben Orlin, who wrote up
| his version as
| https://mathwithbaddrawings.com/2014/06/11/playing-to-lose-o...
| divan wrote:
| Sports is one of the most fascinating and underexplored examples
| of Goodhart's law (collapsing correlation between the metric and
| a goal).
|
| One of the most widely known examples of this is a London 2012
| badminton scandal, when tournament design led to misaligned
| incentives for teams (it was beneficial for them to lose a game,
| to meet with less formidable opponent known beforehand). But
| there are dozens of such cases across many sports. One of the
| attempts to collect them can be found in a paper "When sports
| rules go awry" (DOI: 10.1016/j.ejor.2016.06.050).
|
| UPD. Thanks to sibling comment, good find - youtube playlist from
| Secret Base "Weird Rules":
| https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUXSZMIiUfFSVTX8z2Xl5...
| munificent wrote:
| The meta-game of game design: how do you design a game whose
| mechanics lead to incentives that align with your intentions is
| a fascinating area. It also has deep connections to policy
| design in politics.
|
| In the political arena, it gets so much more complex because
| you have disagreement on intentions and people deliberately
| obfuscating their intentions. So you've got people arguing over
| legislation who are trying to aiming the laws have different
| emergent properties.
| kevinmchugh wrote:
| For games at least, attempting to be highly prescriptive in
| the rules risks strangling the game. Basketball was designed
| to be played without dribbling. By the time players started
| single-handed dribbling it was pretty clear what's the more
| interesting, exciting game to watch and play
| andrewflnr wrote:
| What, it was supposed to be pass-only, like ultimate
| frisbee?
| munificent wrote:
| Yeah, reading the original rules, that's exactly how it
| sounds.
|
| And then some Yale players realized they could "pass it
| to themselves" by moving while it bounced off the floor.
| divan wrote:
| Right. Do you have any good recommendations to read on this
| matter?
|
| Here are a couple of good papers on how metrics distort
| systems and what can be done to mitigate this. [1] [2].
|
| And then a new post by Cedric Chin on practical examples of
| mitigating Goodhart's law in Amazon. Really good read: [3]
|
| But generally, I feel like not many people or organizations
| care about this. The non-profit sports world is conservative
| and slow, organizations and corporations are also often slow,
| and there some psychological/social effects linked to the
| metrics-that-don't-work-anymore.
|
| ---
|
| - [1] Categorizing Variants of Goodhart's Law -
| https://arxiv.org/abs/1803.04585
|
| - [2] Building Less Flawed Metrics: Dodging Goodhart and
| Campbell's Laws - https://www.researchgate.net/publication/33
| 4478956_Building_...
|
| - [3] https://commoncog.com/goodharts-law-not-useful/
| munificent wrote:
| I don't but I'd love to read them if anyone else does.
| tunesmith wrote:
| I like the idea of a two-phase game, where for the first
| phase (most of the game), you're motivated to play your
| hardest for the entire duration, because the score imbalance
| wouldn't mean you _win_ , but would just mean you have that
| much more of a relative advantage in the second phase.
|
| And then the second phase could be evenly-matched, or it
| could be David and Goliath, but then still anything could
| happen.
| Buttons840 wrote:
| A closely related question is: Should playing the fun way,
| and playing the optimal way be the same thing? I used to
| think think the answer was yes, but Spelunky 2 made me doubt;
| in Spelunky using a bomb or a rope is rarely optimal, but it
| can make things simpler and more fun. I think it's a well
| designed game, so the fact that optimal play and fun play are
| different is making me think.
| munificent wrote:
| _> Should playing the fun way, and playing the optimal way
| be the same thing? _
|
| This is something that game designers, especially in
| roguelikes where there is a lot of procedural generation
| and combinatorial gameplay experiences, think about a lot.
|
| There are all sorts of related questions:
|
| * What should the space of optimal strategies look like? A
| single point that players should try to discover and
| optimize for? A region where there are a variety of equally
| valid ways?
|
| * What are the discincentives for non-optimal play? Should
| it just be boring, or should the game actively punish the
| player for not following an expected strategy?
|
| * What to do about strategies that are extremely effective
| but not fun? In roguelikes, that's things like "farming"
| where you find an easy to kill monster that breeds and just
| mow through hundreds of them to grind XP. Should the game
| try to avoid those scenarios so that players don't have to
| make an uncomfortable choice between maximizing versus fun,
| or should that be up to players?
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| There was a period in world rally championship where it was
| beneficial not to win day one or day two of a 3 day
| championship.
|
| This resulted in hilarious but rational situations where top
| racers would race like maniacs for the entire day, then
| 200meters before the end of the a last stage of the day slow
| down and crawl for say 12 seconds, so they would come a second
| behind somebody else and not lead the pack the next day
| (leading the pack effectively means clearing the path on gravel
| roads for the rest of the racers)
|
| It was meant to even the field by handicapping the front
| runners (the Mario kart approach I suppose). But it backfired
| spectacularly.
|
| I think they went back to randomization after that.
| bombcar wrote:
| You find this in online games quite a bit - the have a
| qualifying round in a tournament which divides players into ten
| divisions. The top three out of ten in the top four divisions
| get a great prize, and the top one in the remaining get a
| slightly lesser version. So it makes sense to smurf yourself
| into a lower division and hope to win the one prize than
| compete with equal skill players for the three prizes.
| soldarnal wrote:
| The game clock is one of the more common rules that tends to
| warp gameplay in this way, with teams that are ahead trying to
| avoid play and run out the clock rather than continue to engage
| in the contest. The other team, meanwhile, resorts to
| increasingly desperate tactics like pulling the goalie,
| intentionally committing fouls, or laterals and trying for the
| onside kick.
|
| Related: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elam_Ending
| kodt wrote:
| The end of American Football games is so frustrating because
| of this, with a team just constantly taking a knee to run out
| the clock. It makes the last 2 minutes of the game useless.
|
| Constant fouls in Basketball hoping the opposing team will
| miss a free throw is another frustrating tactic that drags
| the last 2 minutes on forever, in what is usually a forgone
| conclusion anyway.
| freetime2 wrote:
| I find clock management to be an interesting aspect of the
| game in American Football, because literally every second
| counts. It's one of the things that separates elite players
| and coaches from everyone else. Tom Brady, for example, was
| renowned for his ability to move the ball down the field
| and score in the last two minutes of a game.
|
| Sure sometimes it means the game is effectively over 2
| minutes early if the leading team gets possession and the
| trailing team has no timeouts remaining. But in that case
| it just has the effect of shifting the decisive moment a
| little bit earlier (if it's a close game). And the rare
| games that end with 0 seconds on the clock on a game
| winning touchdown or field goal are truly memorable.
| hgsgm wrote:
| You are allowed to go to the kitchen after 58minutes.
| furyofantares wrote:
| Also interesting is how lots of rules have standard penalties -
| and this turns them into potential strategic components rather
| than something you aren't allowed to do. It's not cheating to
| break these rules, it's considered part of the game.
| kenjackson wrote:
| I've always felt basketball is the worst with this of the
| major sports. It is a standard strategy to foul at the end of
| games when losing (or even if winning by 3 in the final
| seconds). The punishment for fouling is to allow the fouled
| player to get free throws, but free throws are a skill and
| not all players are skilled at it. So if you can foul the
| right person you can often change the probability of the
| game.
|
| A simple rule change could end this. For example, a foul in
| the last two minutes is a free throw and the ball.
| dylan604 wrote:
| This is what is known as a "tactical foul" or taking one for
| the team
| jbandela1 wrote:
| Another example is pass interference in college football. It
| is a first down and 15 yards from the line of scrimmage.
|
| Thus if you are getting beat on a play, rather than
| potentially allowing 40 or 50 yards and a touchdown, it is
| better to blatantly pass interfere (tackle the receiver
| before they get the ball, etc).
| cafard wrote:
| Or, you might just manage it without the ref spotting it,
| as late in a recent Super Bowl.
| divan wrote:
| Yeah, that's kinda expected. But what I'm more worried about
| in sports is when metrics(rules) become engrained in that
| sports culture and start shaping the sport itself.
|
| Like, if an athletics high-jump champion has to jump over a
| fence with concrete ground - would s/he be still the best in
| the world? Probably not, because they're focusing on the
| Fosberry flop technique which works only in a competition
| setting with a soft landing mat.
|
| Or in figure skating, where officials think that rules should
| reward "complex elements" and now everyone is chasing
| "complex" elements (quadruple jumps), skipping the "easy"
| elements (actual skating skills).
|
| One of the problem with a metric substituting the original
| True Goal is also when this True Goal is not defined (or
| different people defined it differently). This type of
| Goodhart's law is hard to fix. I'm not sure how many sports
| really have shared understanding of what's a true goal in
| their sports.
| cafard wrote:
| As far as I know, neither the high jump nor the pole vault
| ever had hard landing areas. I'm sure that foam rubber is a
| lot better than dried cow manure, but guys were still going
| way over 6' in the jump and 15' in the vault before foam
| rubber came along.
| divan wrote:
| Right, but I can come up with an infinite number of
| examples. Take javelin throw - the essential skill is,
| well, throwing a javelin. There are many things that can
| theoretically be measured - distance, height, speed,
| jiggling, precision, throwing efficiency. For some
| reasons (historical, practical) distance was chosen. So
| now javelin throwers are good at distances but not at
| anything else. Like it's obvious that if you don't train
| to hit the target with a javelin, you are probably not
| going to be good at it.
|
| So it's unlikely our javelin throw champion can
| outperform the average ancient human in hunting mammoths,
| for example.
|
| I see "mastering javelin throwing skill" as a True Goal
| and "distance" as a metric. True Goal probably includes
| many aspects of the skill (let's say "distance" and
| "precision"), but as we measured only distance, others
| got neglected. The end result is far from True Goal
| because we disincentivize athletes to practice other
| aspects of that basic athletic skill. If the correlation
| between "being a truly great javelin thrower" (i.e. great
| at all aspects of the skill) and a "distance" existed,
| using it for competition resulted in the collapse of the
| correlation. Classic Goodhart's effect.
| hgsgm wrote:
| Mammoths travel in herd, so accuracy isn't very
| important.
| jacquesm wrote:
| There are lots of real world examples of this same
| phenomenon and they usually result in ridiculous losses
| combined with minor gains on one parameter. Balance is
| the key but we tend to reward the specialists (records,
| finances). People always want to know who is 'best' at
| something. Triathlon is one attempt to break this but
| even there it is all quite physical. Chessboxing is
| another :)
| a_c wrote:
| I see it as a principal agent problem [0]. The agent being
| the sport players working according the game rules to
| maximize their gains. It could be pouring countless hours
| into mastering the sport, studying the rules to come up
| with best strategies [1], deliberately losing (e.g. for
| bribery), among others. The principal(s) are the perceived
| sportsmanship, while ill defined, of a particular sports
|
| It also happens to software engineering. The value of your
| code is solely depends on how many times it is being
| willingly run. Be it people using it happily or another
| piece of code is calling it without caveats. But we come up
| with all sorts of metrics, DORA, SPACE, developer
| experience, what not. For most family/small business, like
| restaurants, groceries, builders, etc, the only thing that
| matters are customers willing to return. Somehow people
| think that by mimicking what big companies' management
| practice does can makes you one of the big companies. While
| the most important thing, making things that people want,
| is grossly overlooked. People used to make fun of MBAs
| parachuting into management right out of school. That
| trademark is certainly open to all titles now.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal%E2%80%93agent_p
| roble...
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yh5c3duQQ1w
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Stuff like this is why I fell in love with soccer.
|
| It didn't come quickly. I was not very engaged with youth soccer
| as a kid although looking back it was one of very few "safe
| spaces" for me as a kid where being bullied wasn't a problem. I
| came to see youth soccer as part of declining social mobility in
| the U.S. If you were playing little league maybe you could dream
| of being Babe Ruth but there just wasn't any ladder out of youth
| soccer at that time.
|
| Last December I started working on a smart RSS reader that works
| a bit like TikTok or Stumbleupon and found that my first
| classification model struggled to tell that I liked the NFL and
| hated the Premier League and that got me to reading a lot of
| sports articles and developing a taxonomy to support feature
| engineering.
|
| After reading articles about games lost by own goals, thinking
| about how I'd feel if it was my team in danger of relegation,
| etc. I found I really found soccer interesting after all.
| kevinmchugh wrote:
| Relegation and promotion are just such good systems that all
| sports should have them
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Frequently I get a bunch of free Giants gear around November
| because my friends who are Giants fans are disgusted with how
| they are playing and don't want to be seen in them. If the
| NFL had relegation this couldn't happen so chronically.
|
| On the other hand, promotion/relegation needs a big enough
| market to support multiple tiers. Amazingly, the UK has
| several layers of leagues that attract fans and seem to be
| economically viable (in some sense) but MLS struggles to
| attract any attention at all in the U.S. and how second and
| third tier leagues could be viable is beyond me.
| iainmerrick wrote:
| I think it's somewhat analogous to both NFL and college
| football being popular in the US. It's incredible to me
| that people are so keen to watch college students play, but
| I hear it's a pretty big deal.
| kevinmchugh wrote:
| There's big swathes of the US that aren't dense enough to
| attract an NFL team but have plenty of people who like
| football. The urban/rural divide and state rivalries in
| the US also makes it an awkward fit sometimes for a
| person to root for their nearest team.
|
| University teams may also be less anchored to an
| individual star since they age out so quickly, and could
| have a coherent identity for decades under a single coach
| kevinmchugh wrote:
| I don't know that soccer in the US could support a
| promotion/relegation system but basketball, baseball, and
| football could. NCAA and MiLB are popular enough that lower
| leagues could be sustained.
| smcl wrote:
| I think the greater worry is that the gap in quality and
| finances between any second tier and the NBA or NFL would
| be so enormous that you're virtually guaranteed to
| bankrupt any relegated team (decreased TV money,
| sponsorship, merch, gate receipts) and to completely
| crush any newly promoted team. That is unless you dumped
| a huge amount of capital into building or subsidising the
| second tier for a few seasons at least.
|
| I don't think an MLS second tier would be too far behind
| in terms of quality, and the defacto second tier - the
| USL Championship - _currently_ has attendance roughly
| double that of the Scottish second tier[0] which is ample
| to sustain a professional league, and that 'd surely
| improve if there was the possibility of promotion to the
| MLS on the line. But if I understand it correctly there's
| some weird system where the MLS organization itself owns
| the teams, so presumably they would be resistant to any
| of them being relegated, unless they _also_ owned those
| in the second tier.
|
| But in reality promotion and relegation isn't a thing in
| US professional sport, and it's not structured such that
| it's really feasible or desirable. That's not necessarily
| a bad thing, it's just different.
|
| [0] - 5,061/game on average over the 27 USL teams in the
| regular season (rising to 7,841 in the post-season) vs
| 2,237/game in the mostly-pro Scottish Championship
| kevinmchugh wrote:
| Where I think the American system breaks down is that the
| value of teams is in the branding and the exclusive
| status. Just being in the league means the franchise is
| worth single digit billion dollars, and that floor will
| hold no matter how long a team is bad.
|
| It can't happen because that floor is useful to the
| owners, I imagine if by some miracle it did the NFL would
| split into two leagues. There's a bunch of non NFL
| football that could also fit into that lower tier, arena,
| cfl, fcf.
|
| The NCAA is the other force keeping this from happening.
| The Sooners saturate the need for an Oklahoma football
| team, there doesn't need to be a second or third tier
| team there. But it'd be more interesting and competitive
| if these leagues were integrated together.
|
| I also would hope promotion/relegation would help with
| the tanking that's so noticable in the NHL and NBA but
| don't know enough about drafting/recruiting in European
| football (and there's probably much simpler solutions
| there)
| WorldMaker wrote:
| The US has second, third, and fourth tier leagues already,
| though those are all part of USL rather than MLS. MLS has a
| lot more money than USL and isn't interested in
| promotion/relegation concepts because it is built like
| MLB/NBA and likes the gatekeeping aspects of those because
| that influences investment money and helps keep MLS
| comparatively rich. But USL thinks promotion/relegation
| could work in the US, they just don't think it can work
| that well if they don't also control the top tier league.
| From my understanding USL has quietly been hoping that play
| in the USL Championship league (their top tier and
| comparatively in the US market the "second tier" overall)
| could get competitive and interesting enough to usurp the
| MLS and put USL in a place to have the top-tier and move to
| a "proper" European-style relegation/promotion system.
| smcl wrote:
| If they're not interested in promotion and relegation
| maybe a national cup competition, like the FA Cup in
| England, could be one fun way to have some level of
| integration with the other levels. The excitement of cup
| competitions would boost attendance across the board, and
| fun moments like cup upsets (a lower tier team defeating
| a top-tier one) raise the profile of the sport overall
| through media exposure.
|
| It's maybe more tempting for MLS to focus on money-
| spinning continental competitions like the CONCACAF
| equivalent to the Champions League. But I think they'd be
| missing out if they didn't at least explore a "US FA Cup"
| as a means of growing interest in the domestic game
| itself, which indirectly benefits them.
| [deleted]
| brycekahle wrote:
| Such a tournament already exists, called the U.S. Open
| Cup[1]
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Open_Cup
| smcl wrote:
| Oh amazing! Shows my ignorance of the game outside my
| little bubble, but I'm delighted to learn of its
| existence!
| yowzadave wrote:
| How do you defend against an opponent trying to score an own
| goal? Wouldn't it be off-sides if you got between the player and
| their goal?
| haunter wrote:
| No because they control the ball. You are only offside if your
| team is controling the ball + you are actively involved in the
| play [your team's attack]
| CocaKoala wrote:
| Interfering with the ball is sufficient to be called for off-
| side - you need to be in active play, but you can do that
| when your team doesn't have possession.
| haunter wrote:
| What you are describing would make attacking the keeper
| pointless for example when they dropped the ball from hand
| for a kickoff, cause that would be offside which is not
| true.
|
| By your description Mandzukic's WC final goal should be
| offside https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzN-ahqULc4
| CocaKoala wrote:
| Ball is rolling towards the goal - if the attacking
| player touches it, it will be offsides: A player in an
| offside position has entered active play by "interfering
| with play by playing or touching a ball passed or touched
| by a team-mate".
|
| Goalkeeper makes a save, since the ball is rolling
| towards the goal. If the attacking player touches it, it
| will be offsides: A player in an offside position has
| entered active play by "challenging an opponent for the
| ball" or "gaining an advantage by playing the ball or
| interfering with an opponent when it has [...] been
| deliberately saved by any opponent".
|
| The goalkeeper deliberately plays the ball. Immediately
| afterwards, the attacking player receives the ball played
| by the goalkeeper - this is not offsides, since "a player
| in an offside position receiving the ball from an
| opponent who deliberately plays the ball, including by
| deliberate handball, is not considered to have gained an
| advantage, unless it was a deliberate save by any
| opponent."
|
| https://www.thefa.com/football-rules-
| governance/lawsandrules...
| CocaKoala wrote:
| As long as a nominal defender (not counting the goalie) is in
| between you and the goal, I don't think you're off-side. So
| presumably it means you have to a) maintain possession of the
| ball or 2) clear the ball before all other defenders are able
| to make it past whoever currently has possession. A) sounds a
| lot easier than 2), though.
| jnsie wrote:
| No, you'd be offside if your own team member passed you the
| ball while you were between the player and their goal. You
| wouldn't be offside if the other team had the ball.
|
| Football would be a nightmare if players were hanging out in
| the other team's box, waiting for the ball to be hoofed upfield
| to them so they could tap it into the back of the net. Offside
| stops this from happening by making sure that the receiving
| player is not in front of the opposition's defensive line.
| permo-w wrote:
| > Football would be a nightmare if players were hanging out
| in the other team's box, waiting for the ball to be hoofed
| upfield to them so they could tap it into the back of the net
|
| this is the commonly-held wisdom on offside, but I'm a little
| sceptical of it. 7-a-side, 5-a-side and futsal manage just
| fine without the offside rule (admittedly on smaller
| pitches). I suspect that 11-a-side would just look different
| without offside, it wouldn't be a completely broken game.
| your best defenders would still have fair battles with your
| best attackers, and midfielders-midfielders etc
| ajuc wrote:
| Field size makes all the difference. Try to play on full-
| size football field for 90 minutes and you start to
| understand a lot of weird rules and tactics in football.
| permo-w wrote:
| I'm saying this from a position of having played plenty
| of 11-a-side football in my life
| jnsie wrote:
| I don't think it would be completely broken, per se, but as
| a spectacle I think it would be ruined...Obviously not a
| big concern for 7-a-side, 5-a-side, etc.
| pmontra wrote:
| At least one forward would hang close to the opponent's
| goalkeeper, guarded by a defender. Teams would be spread in
| length over the pitch. There will probably be many special
| strategies. Maybe everybody would be in the box when the
| other goalkeeper kicks the ball. That's prevented by
| offside now. BTW offside works only in the opponent's half
| of the pitch.
| owenmarshall wrote:
| It wouldn't be a _broken_ game in that it 'd still
| function, but I can't imagine it'd be an _enjoyable_ one to
| watch.
| owenmarshall wrote:
| No. A player in an offside position is absolutely allowed to
| receive the ball from an opponent who deliberately plays the
| ball.
| thazework wrote:
| As others have said it would not be offside under current
| rules, but to answer your question the only realistic way to
| defend against an own goal would be time wasting, faking
| injury, geberally keeping the ball away from the 16 yard box.
| Kuiper wrote:
| This brings to mind one of my favorite TV shows, One Outs. It's
| about the strategies that a clever and "unsportsmanlike" player
| brings to a baseball team, exploiting the rules while violating
| the spirit of the game.
|
| As one example: in order for a baseball game to be considered
| valid, both teams must play 5 innings. If the weather is bad and
| teams are unable to continue due to rain, a <5 inning game is
| considered invalid and scheduled for a later date. If one team is
| behind and knows there's a high chance of rain later in the day,
| the pitcher can begin drawing out the length of innings by
| intentionally giving up hits. (After all, it doesn't matter how
| many runs he gives up if the game is canceled.) This, in turn,
| gives the opposite incentive to the opposing team's offense, who
| _wants_ their runners to be declared "out" so that the inning
| can end faster. There's a real-time rules-gaming arms race as
| both teams test the bounds of what's legally permissible, driven
| by incentives that lead to a very unusual game of baseball.
| hn2017 wrote:
| Wiki article
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbados_4%E2%80%932_Grenada
|
| https://bleacherreport.com/articles/74831-barbados-vs-grenad...
|
| Note this isn't possible in today's rules, afaik
| arduinomancer wrote:
| > Any goal scored in extra time would count as two goals
|
| That seems like a really strange rule to have
| steveylang wrote:
| Yeah, I can't think of a plausible rationale for this rule.
| FTA:
|
| --------------------------------------------
|
| No match could end in a draw; if the teams were tied at the end
| of regular time, they would go into sudden death extra time.
| But! Any goal scored in extra time would count as two goals.
| This was presumably done because this tournament, like many,
| used goal difference to break ties in the qualifying groups.
| (Goal difference = total number of goals they've scored minus
| the number of goals they've conceded.) So that extra time
| "golden goal" would give a team an edge in the overall
| competition. Little did the organisers know that it would also
| lead to one of the strangest football games ever seen.
|
| --------------------------------------------
|
| Such a rule has no impact within a game, it doesn't change the
| basic premise that a tie game goes to sudden death and next
| goal wins. But potentially weird scenarios are actually pretty
| easy to think of if you just consider the rule for a couple of
| minutes.
| permo-w wrote:
| something similar could arise even without double goals in
| extra time. let's say your opponents have a man sent off, and
| you're up by 1 with minutes left to play, but you need 2 or 3
| to qualify. an own-goal to give yourself 30 extra minutes to
| score those few goals against a weakened opposition is probably
| the best choice
|
| it's "no draws" rather than "double goals" that creates the
| unusual incentive. double goals just exacerbates it
| kevinmchugh wrote:
| And goal differential as tiebreaker creates an incentive
| where just winning isn't enough
| permo-w wrote:
| I think as long as you can't gain extra time by playing
| deliberately badly, this is largely okay? it's good to want
| to teams to go out and try to hammer each other rather than
| narrowly shithouse a 1-0, as has been very common in recent
| major tournaments. even so, a lot of big tournaments have
| switched to head-to-head tiebreakers recently
| 7373737373 wrote:
| One other weird thing: When a soccer player who is not a
| goalkeeper prevents a goal by catching the ball with their hands,
| they "just" get a red card and the attacking team a penalty, even
| if they would have certainly scored otherwise.
|
| Luis Suarez successfully used this in the 2010 World Cup quarter-
| finals in the Uruguay vs Ghana game:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dM-29hy-Qyw - Ghana missed the
| penalty, which led to a penalty shootout, which Uruguay won.
|
| Skimming through the laws of the game
| (https://downloads.theifab.com/downloads/laws-of-the-game-202...)
| I do wonder whether a trainer and up to 4 other players (because
| a team which can field less than 7 players forfeits the game)
| climbing on the crossbar until it breaks could be advantageous in
| some situation as well since
|
| > If it cannot be repaired the match must be abandoned.
|
| Very unsportsmanlike indeed.
| smcl wrote:
| Interestingly in rugby they have a concept called a "penalty
| try" - effectively when there's a particular infringement
| against a team in a scoring position, the referee awards the
| points to the attacking team as if they had gone ahead and
| scored.
|
| See here for an example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAq-
| xp54j1w
|
| The play gets repeated a couple of times and explained in some
| detail throughout but you can see what happens in the first few
| seconds of the video - blue is about to receive the ball in an
| incredibly advantageous position (a couple of steps away from
| scoring) white performs a deliberate foul in defending that
| play (they deliberately knock it forward and out of play,
| without trying to catch it). There's more to it than just "a
| very egregious foul against an attacker" but it's a good-enough
| simplification for our purposes.
|
| People are already quite resistant to VAR in football already
| (got my own opinions on that) so I think there's virtually zero
| chance of football adopting this. But if ever there was an
| argument for it, it's definitely that Suarez case in 2010,
| Ghana were cheated out of an historic World Cup semifinal
| appearance.
| DoneWithAllThat wrote:
| Exactly the same concept exists in NHL hockey by the way. In
| particular, if a player attacking an empty net (because the
| goaltender has been pulled late in the game to add another
| skater) is interfered with from behind, or a thrown stick
| disrupts his shot, the goal is just awarded on the assumption
| that the attacker would have almost certainly scored.
| fineIllregister wrote:
| A similar concept exists in American football, but it is
| rarely invoked.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unfair_act
| golemiprague wrote:
| [dead]
| permo-w wrote:
| the game would be abandoned, but almost certainly it would be a
| 3-0 forfeit win to the opposition. perhaps if 3-0 goal
| difference was advantageous?
| dylan604 wrote:
| for those wondering why 3-0, it's based on tournament points
| scoring. you get 3 points for a win, 1 point for a draw, a
| point for each goal (maximum of 3 points for goals) per game,
| and an additional point for the shutout. so, each game in
| tournament scoring is worth 7 points. after all of those
| points are added, goal differentials can come into
| consideration for tie breakers.
| smcl wrote:
| Unless you're talking about some _extremely_ niche
| tournament, that 's not how it works at all, in football at
| least. In the majority of league systems you get 3 points
| for a win, 1 point for a draw and _that 's it_. If you are
| level on points with another team in your group after all
| games are played then there will be strictly defined rules
| for that tournament to separate the teams, often a
| combination of the following in some order of precedence:
|
| - head-to-head results between tied teams
|
| - total goal difference, i.e. _sum(goals_scored) -
| sum(goals_conceded)_ across all games
|
| - total goals scored across all games
|
| - disciplinary record (number of yellow/red cards awarded
| against players)
|
| If teams still cannot be separated, it'll fall back on
| something as simple and cruel as a coin-toss - though maybe
| they could go to extra time and penalties if the tied teams
| are playing each other in the last game. Maybe you're
| thinking of situations like rugby where you can get a
| "bonus point" games in group stages by scoring 4 tries or
| keeping the losing margin down to a handful of points.
|
| In any case, I can't give a good reason as to why 3-0 is
| usually the score given for a walkover - I think it's just
| generally considered to be a convincing win that isn't too
| over-the-top.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Throughout my life, I've been a player, coach, and
| referee. In each of those roles, I have been in
| tournaments where this was the way the tournament was
| scored.
|
| Edit: >though maybe they could go to extra time and
| penalties
|
| As a referee, when a tournament is on the last day, it is
| not uncommon to hear various tournament officials saying
| within earshot of the refs "we need winners". This is of
| course a plausible deniability way of saying "be generous
| with penalties".
| Denvercoder9 wrote:
| > Throughout my life, I've been a player, coach, and
| referee. In each of those roles, I have been in
| tournaments where this was the way the tournament was
| scored.
|
| Where? I've never seen or heard of this scoring system
| being used in continental Europe (not even in the little
| kids leagues), and it's also not what's used in the
| professional tournaments (World Cup, Euros, Copa America,
| Champions League, etc).
| LanceH wrote:
| He's not talking pro leagues, but the kinds of leagues
| where you make a team and sign up for a weekend
| tournament. That scoring system is very common.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Too right. You think if I played, coached, and refereed
| in a professional league, I'd be spending my time reading
| HN? ha!
| smcl wrote:
| GP mentioned this though:
|
| > not even in the little kids leagues
|
| It might just be something that is very common
| _somewhere_ or at some level (dunno where), but it 's
| pretty alien to the pair of us and would be for most/all
| of continental Europe at the very least.
| drowsspa wrote:
| Is it? I'm Brazilian and I never heard of it.
| jamiek88 wrote:
| I'm English and I haven't either.
|
| I've also played in UK, Middle East, Spain, France, USA
| and Canada.
|
| From organized leagues to games with mates and pub type
| tournaments and have never come across that convoluted
| system.
| drowsspa wrote:
| That must be very US-specific, it just sounds American.
| But the 3 point thing definitely has nothing to do with
| this oddity of scoring
| dylan604 wrote:
| then why not 1-0 scores?
| smcl wrote:
| It's a good question but I don't think there's any good
| answer other than "1-0 or 2-0 doesn't feel like
| punishment enough". Interesingly, for two-legged cup
| competitions a forfeit likely won't result in a 3-0 loss,
| but a disqualification instead. So if you're winning 4-0
| or 5-0 and can't be bothered showing up for the return
| fixture, you can't just forfeit and win 4-3 or 5-3 on
| aggregate, you have to fulfil the fixture.
|
| And additionally, not showing up for a game might not
| even cause you to forfeit. Estonia didn't turn up to a
| European Qualifier against my national team, we didn't
| get a walkover and had to replay (which we won 1-0): http
| s://twitter.com/90sfootball/status/1297216969326780416
| dylan604 wrote:
| I've officiated games where the weather was lousy (our
| leagues are pretty fair weathered) and one team was
| heading for state championship and the opposing team was
| just getting slaughtered (double digit to nil at half).
| League rules say if the game was abandoned in the first
| half, the game must be replayed. _NOBODY_ wanted that
| (plus there was no room left in schedule), so as agreed
| by both teams immediately after bringing the first half
| to an end, the teams switched sides, the second half was
| started and immediately abandoned due to inclement
| weather. Since it was in the second half, the score stood
| as final.
| smcl wrote:
| In what country and in what sport? Was it younger kids,
| maybe? I'm not doubting you, I'm genuinely curious
| because this is incredibly bizarre to me. I dug around on
| wikipedia and found a couple of dozen examples of some
| unusual points scoring given[0] but only a handful of
| smaller US leagues long in the past featured this bonus-
| points-per-goal system, and seemingly only ever for a
| short period (experiment?)
|
| Thinking about it, bonus points are maybe a fun way to
| spice up small-sided games. I think there'd be uproar if
| it was considered for anything beyond that though :)
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_tournament_rankin
| g_syste...
| dylan604 wrote:
| Between actually getting work done and looking for a way
| to provide an answer, I've had a hard time getting a link
| to send.
|
| The closest I've come is a scoring method called 10 Point
| System where it's slight different in W=6 points, D=3
| points, bonus point per goal (max 3), bonus point for
| shut out. So I could have mis-remembered the points I
| initially stated. It's been 10+ years since I've
| participated in those tourneys.
|
| The world is a much bigger place than central Europe and
| people do things differently in those other places. Not
| everyone plays with the exact rules like those house
| rules in Monopoly. In UIL soccer (governing body for
| Texas High School sports), the rules get totally goofy.
| First, the center referee has to make hand signals
| similar to American Football refs by winding the clock to
| indicate to the clock operator to start the clock,
| crossing the arms above their head to indicate to _STOP_
| the clock (WTF!!), free substitution so a player can be
| brought back onto the field after being subbed off,
| players must be subbed when issued a yellow card and
| allowed to come back on at a later time (thought to allow
| teenagers to cool down before escalating hormones get the
| better of them), indirect free kicks awarded to team in
| possession in lieu of drop ball restarts. Those are the
| main ones that I remember. Oh, and in UIL, there is a
| referee system called Duals where you have 2 officials on
| the field and both have whistles. They each run a
| diagonal system in their respective half. This is used
| when not enough officials are available to do the
| traditional center + 2 assistants
| drowsspa wrote:
| I think the lesson here is just "American-specific
| rules", not "Central Europe specific rules". In Latin
| America I never heard of it either
| smcl wrote:
| The user also made another comment detailing some
| interesting reasons why some rules may have come about.
| Definitely some interesting stuff, even if I don't think
| it'd be too palatable back home.
| smcl wrote:
| That's cool, I had absolutely no idea! So while I may
| have suggested in other comments that I didn't love
| European FAs fiddling with the offside rule and VAR, I do
| appreciate a bit of innovation and creativity and it
| sounds like the US is willing to experiment which is
| great to see. I happily retract my earlier confident
| assertion about how points work in groups/leagues :)
|
| On another note, I've really enjoyed seeing the game over
| there going from strength to strength, I hope you're
| enjoying it too and continue to stay involved at some
| level!
| dylan604 wrote:
| Just to tack on more as I've knocked some cobwebs loose,
| the UIL also did their penalty shoot outs similar to
| hockey where the ball was put in play some 20 yards out
| and the attacker allowed to dribble the ball and the
| keeper was allowed to challenge. In the early days of the
| MLS, they did this as well. When MLS did away with that
| non-sense, the UIL followed as well.
|
| US Soccer (official FIFA member) was apparently so
| concerned that soccer would not be accepted that they
| were willing to experiment with rules to make things more
| "exciting". UIL did things because Texas is just so
| entrenched with Friday Night Lights football, that things
| had to be brought into alignment with their understanding
| (tongue planted firmly in cheek). After all, it is using
| their field! Also, the organization of officials in UIL
| sports (Texas Association of Sports Officials - TASO) is
| kind of weird. Once you become an official of one sport,
| you can easily become an official of another sport with
| no experience necessary. Naturally, a lot of the
| throwball referees crossed over to football officiating
| in the early days. As the UIL game garnered more respect,
| better officials started to make their way, but the rules
| are still some mishmash hybrid gene spliced 100% GMO'd
| version.
| smcl wrote:
| Ahhh I see, so some of the experiments might have not
| even been deliberate in the end. Either way that's an
| interesting bit of history, I'm glad to have learned
| about it!
|
| I'm about to re-enter the game aged 37 years old (not
| played in ~1.5 yrs) this weekend with trials for a little
| local very-very minor team here. No idea how it'll go but
| I'm curious to see if my legs can carry me for one more
| season :D
| dylan604 wrote:
| it was never the legs that failed, but it was always the
| gut/diaphragm. as a defender, i'd make sure that the run
| we're about to make when that ball comes over the top was
| done at my pace using all of the dark arts i could
| muster.
|
| good luck!
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