World Cup Fury

One of the many things in this world that really gets on my nerves is the absurd lack of awareness of hindsight bias on the part of professional football commentators. Some high-profile Australian football commentators, most notably, Craig Foster (SBS) and Robbie Slater (used to do a lot of stuff on Fox Sports for the A-League, don’t know what he’s doing currently), have come out with scathing remarks about Australia’s disappointing performance in the group stage that has just passed (at least for Australia’s group), where we bowed out with only a single point after a hard-fought loss to France, a draw with Denmark, and a loss to Peru. What’s weird is that these commentators, along with everyone else who watched the games, noted that the game against France was fairly even and that we restricted France’s ability to create chances quite severely; that we created a lot more chances than Denmark, had more possession than Denmark (54% to 46%), and only lacked finishing quality and a goal-scoring instinct in the box; and that we created a lot more chances than Peru, had more possession than Peru (55% to 45%), and again lacked finishing quality and a goal-scoring instinct in the box whereas Peru were astonishingly clinical with their paltry chances to score two goals with two great strikes. The fact that we had so many chances and failed to finish any of them (our only two goals came from penalties) is, to be sure, suggestive of a specific problem (the absence of a world-class striker), although I think there was definitely just an element of bad luck also, especially in the final game. But even if you ignore the luck part, the super weird thing about the emerging critiques is that they are not even merely specifically targeted at the fact that we lack a world-class striker. I don’t get it, because every other aspect of our performances was excellent. We punched well above our weight, in terms of rankings and player dollar-value, so far as I can see. Yes, we were Asian champions in 2015, but who’s to say that we wouldn’t have beat Japan and Korea in this world cup anyway? Just because the other Asian teams superficially did better doesn’t mean we wouldn’t have beat them. Our group was tough. It’s foolish to make these determinations. And it’s just so fucking irrational to judge a team so harshly and sweepingly by the points made in three games.

The key thing to remember is that there’s nothing remotely deterministic about football-match results. We know this with high confidence. Here’s a good piece of evidence: the world’s most sophisticated model for making such predictions just got something very badly wrong (https://www.technologyreview.com/s/611397/machine-learning-predicts-world-cup-winner/).

On this subject, we shouldn’t be so harsh on Germany either. I think it’s fair to say they’ve had bad luck this world cup, too. Yes, they’ve lacked inspiration in attack, but they’ve created a lot of chances still. Shit happens.

Of course, nobody will listen to this. Everyone thinks they have something smart to say about football teams. Whenever a team fails, everyone always thinks there’s a clear reason. Nobody gives a fuck about the truth, or reality. Truly, nobody gives a fuck about reality. And it fucking pisses me off.