Welcome back. If you missed the first half of this post, it might be a good idea to check it out. It went up on the last Wednesday of May.
If you did not like the first half, I would advise moving on- the below is more of the same, just with different prompts. Thanks for coming and see you next time!
Let's get the second half underway...
2011: Barcelona 3, Manchester United 1
My favorite soccer team is Liverpool. Their number one rival is Manchester United. In sports, it is common for fans of one team to hate their rival team without any real justification. I just wanted to get that out of the way- let's call it 'full disclosure' before my next few paragraphs.
I hate United. I can't stand or understand them. When Liverpool plays United, I feel physically ill until the game is over. Even when Liverpool win, I rarely enjoy it- the feeling is more relief than elation. There was, however, one notable exception:
United 1, Liverpool 4
This was the final score of a 2009 game that took place on United's own home field. It remains the clear winner in the 'favorite moment of the past decade' category and I do not think it is close.
To make things even better, one of my best friends was at that game. He's a United fan. The fact that he was there to witness it all made the occasion all the better.
Just in case you have forgotten, dear reader, what this occasion I refer to is:
Manchester United 1, Liverpool 4
It looks better with the full name up there, I think.
Anyway, the day the game took place is known as 'Doghead' on campus, a convenient excuse for partying until dawn. Since the game kicked off at 7:45 AM, I drank all night, watched the sun come up with a couple hundred other drunken idiots, ate breakfast, and then somehow watched the game without passing out. It was probably a good thing that my friend was studying abroad that semester; were he still on campus, my drunken post-match rendition of 'You Never Walk Alone' would have surely led to the first Liverpool-United related defenestration (at least, that I am aware of).
Of course, given the little fact that...Manchester United 1, Liverpool 4...it is possible I would have fluttered softly to the ground, such was the soaring feeling after the match.
This pure delight with blowout victories is one of soccer's most appealing features. Blowouts are, simply put, much more enjoyable in soccer than in other sports. It helps that a soccer game decided by three goals is a blowout, but still. To pass the time, the players can kick the ball among themselves, do fancy tricks and flicks, and wave at the fans singing and shouting 'OLE' at the opponents.
I think this happens because of the substitution rules. In soccer, only three changes are allowed. So, unlike in helmet football or basketball- where the exchange of players is so frequent I am reminded of the subway platforms at Park Street Station- in soccer, the best players usually remain on the field for the entire game. Instead of watching all the backups replace the best players, soccer fans can watch as the starters, forced to remain on the field, reluctantly entertain the fans (and perhaps run up the score a little, if the spirit so moves them).
This 2011 final was a true shellacking- Barcelona had twelve shots on target to United's one and possessed the ball for 63% of the match. Mathematically speaking, outside of a Barcelona player turning and booting the ball into his own net, United did not get enough shots to score a second goal! Of the twelve finals I've seen, it came the closest to being a blowout.
Barcelona moved the ball at will, going around, through, or past United as the situation dictated. The skill on display was breathtaking at times. But the score was tied 1-1 until the fifty-third minute. In soccer, blowouts manifest a little differently- for all their superiority, Barcelona still needed to complete the job. Dominance is not a condition that automatically leads to victory in this game; the goal-scoring skill is appropriately known as finishing (1).
A game like this clarified the acceptance of the penalty shootout for me. A team that cannot finish their passing moves with a goal does not win. And games that tend to end deadlocked usually do so because the teams lack the cutting edge in front of goal required to score. To break a tie with a competition focusing on the very skill that would have won the game in regulation does suggest an element of justice to it (2).
But I admit that there is something dissatisfying about the current format. My favorite proposal for breaking ties is very simple. Instead of having the shootout after the end of overtime, have the shootout before it starts. If the overtime ends deadlocked, the shootout winner is declared the winner of the game. In this format, the team that 'lost' the pre-overtime shootout would have to press for a goal in the thirty ensuing minutes. This would resolve the problem of boring overtimes between two risk-averse teams that are happy enough to wait for a shootout.
And though it might encourage certain teams to sit back and try to defend their 'lead', I do not think it would kill the game off entirely. Those teams that would try and defend this 'lead' tend to be the same types of teams that would try and keep the game tied to go to the shootout in the current system.
Of course, it is always good to know the cons of any policy recommendation. I cannot help but think of the game just a month after this final when Japan, just four months after a crippling tsunami, beat the USA in a shootout to win the 2011 World Cup (3). I enjoy the Liverpool games, of course, but that final is the top soccer moment of the decade for me.
Perhaps the shootout system is just fine the way it is.
2012: Chelsea 1, Bayern Munich 1 (Chelsea won on penalties)
Bayern lost their second final in the last three against a truly dreadful Chelsea side. The London club was very much a shadow of their former dominant self but reached the final anyway thanks to strong defending, opportunistic scoring, and a good share of fortune. The final summarized the tournament run. Bayern outshot their London-based opponents, 35-9, but missed a penalty and hit a post in the process of squandering their dominant performance. All the opportunities to win comfortably were there but, unlike Barcelona the year before, Bayern failed to cash in on their advantage. Chelsea hung on, got a late equalizer, and took home the trophy in the shootout.
This is the first final I remember watching alone. I streamed a replay on my laptop the night after the game. One of the weird problems about watching tape delayed soccer on a laptop is how the display revealing the length of the video ruins the final result.
A video that runs for two hours reveals that the game finished in regular time. A video that runs for about two hours and forty minutes means the game wrapped up in extra time. And a video exceeding three hours surely ended in a shootout. There are no exceptions because the lengths of soccer games are so predictable. Knowing how long the game runs does not automatically ruin the outcome, of course, but it does take away from the drama of late goals.
One of soccer's biggest strengths from the fan's perspective is how predictable the length of the game is. If I intend to watch a game, I know to allocate two hours. Soccer is so predictable because there are no in-game commercial breaks and no stoppages of the clock. Occasionally, cup or tournament games run longer if there is an overtime option (but most games just end with a tie).
This is in stark contrast to other sports where the prevalence of commercial breaks and the start-stop clock mean that the commitment from a viewer is a range spanning two and a half to four hours. The older I get, the less interest I have in those unable to commit their time or schedule in advance. Sports, it seems, is no exception (4).
I have no idea why the video problem never got fixed. It should never have existed in the first place. In 2012, I could watch a soccer game from halfway around the world, on demand, in HD, but I couldn't do so without being able to figure out what happened in the game thanks to the length of the video. It made no sense then and makes less sense thinking about it now.
I tried all sorts of hacks to deal with the problem. Finally, I put an index card over the bottom left corner of the window to avoid seeing the length of the video. But even then, sometimes problems with pausing, buffering, or just moving the mouse would cause the time display to pop up and ruin the experience. It also hurt my budding understanding of the right back position.
I don't remember if I watched this game knowing the final length. It probably would have been better if I did. There is no point in watching Chelsea win, especially if the result is unexpected.
2013: Bayern Munich 2, Borussia Dortmund 1
My first final away from home, so to speak, as the game coincides with a visit to New York City. By this time, the game was played on a Saturday afternoon. The sport's popularity in the US seemed to be rising and the final was officially An Event, at least in 'global' cities like NYC (5). We wandered the streets a bit before settling on one of several thousand (approximate count) Irish bars in Midtown to
As far as storylines went, this one had some juicy ones. First was Bayern's quest to win a final after two failures in the past three. Second was that their opponent, Dortmund, was kind of like their kid brother in Germany.
But the biggest story by far was Bayern's announcement that they had already signed Dortmund's start player, Mario Gotze, effective as soon as the season ended. Since this game was the final, the season's end meant the full-time whistle. This slap in the face prompted howls of protest from the supporters of the underdog team (and brought to mind an analogy Michael Lewis used in Moneyball about Goliath buying another one of poor little David's slings).
Of course, the neutral fans recognized that this is not such a strange occurrence. The structure of Europe's domestic leagues (most of them resembling one another) encourages such signings. At the top is the royalty, one or two clubs that always win. These are clubs like Barcelona, Juventus, and Bayern. Next is a slightly larger group that occasionally challenges the royalty, depending on circumstances, but usually duke it out among themselves for temporary places in the top three or four. The final layer is basically everyone else, the 98%, who are just trying to stay in business.
There is no structure to prop up losing teams in the way that there is in America's sports. Thus, teams that fall into that bottom layer often struggle to climb out. Dortmund was once in that group and, of all things, required a loan from Bayern to help them avoid bankruptcy (6).
The idea that a team could disappear from the face of the top league, so to speak, fascinated me when I started following the sport. I even wrote a short paper on the topic in my 'Math-Econ' class that essentially said 'people will do more for a larger prize than a smaller prize' (7). Being college, that one sentence became an eight-page paper full of equations, run-on sentences, and cited sources. I miss college.
Unlike most of the economic theories I studied (or invented), this one actually worked almost exactly as described in real life. Liverpool, after several outstanding seasons (and an excellent result one year against Manchester United, which if I forgot to mention earlier, saw them win 4-1 away from home) under Rafa Benitez, nearly 'entered administration' (English phrase for bankruptcy) in 2011 after a leveraged takeover (American phrase for rich dudes borrowing money out of their A$$ that they force the club they 'bought' to pay back for them) of the club piled debt and interest payments onto the team's balance sheet. The club was so desperate for money that even Mascherano was sold.
The owners, well versed in how the
On the surface, this seems a contradiction. America, the great land of democracy and capitalism, runs sports leagues in ways that look almost socialist from afar. There are safety nets in place that would make even the staunchest advocate of universal healthcare blush.
On the other hand, Europe's leagues have no barriers to entry and limited mechanisms to redistribute revenue from top clubs to the bottom feeders. Teams that once were pillars of local communities go bankrupt all the time.
The way it plays out usually restores some of the implied order. The key is money. There are no draft picks in Europe and no salary caps. There is no protected period during which a lesser club is allowed unimpeded access to the young players it finds. All that matters is how much money the club has. And thus a second thing I learned in economics that actually plays out in real life- capital moves much faster than labor.
A club can sell kits ('jerseys') much faster than a fledging club can win its way up to the top league. A bajillion-Euro sponsorship agreement with T-Mobile or Cheverolet takes just months to finalize while developing the youth players needed to challenge for titles takes years. Thus, clubs at the top accumulate cash much faster than clubs at the bottom accumulate capital.
So, although it is possible for a club to come from nothing and establish itself in the upper echelon, it is much more likely that a richer club will mobilize its cash resources and nip such developments in the bud. If the US tech scene worked like soccer in Europe, Microsoft would have acquired Facebook while it was exclusive to Harvard (and likely, turned it into an in-house messaging or directory tool).
On this day, all of these factors implied that Bayern was the clear favorite. And yet, somehow, Dortmund was considered a formidable opponent. The key was their manager, Jurgen Klopp, who led them to two league titles- finishing ahead of Bayern- in the prior two seasons (8). And though they fell behind Bayern in this current season, there was talk that Dortmund eased their pace in the league to focus on winning the Champions League. It promised to be a tremendous game, and it was.
Around halftime, I ran into an acquaintance from college. Whenever I run into someone, the event seems perfectly natural. And yet, in hindsight, the combination of events required for the two minute 'how you doin', how you been, gotta run' conversation reveals the ridiculously low probability that such chance encounters ever happen at all.
Consider all the events that led to this encounter:
*I needed to become a soccer fan, going against every instinct honed by suburban America, my childhood social circles, and ESPN.
*The roommate process in freshman year paired me with one of my eventual best friends who I was now visiting.
*I drink beers in the middle of the day despite being an adult ('adult').
*I needed to be in NYC on this particular weekend.
*I convinced my friends to watch the game out as opposed to at their apartment.
*We wandered around until we picked this bar, at semi-random.
*I happen to find this acquaintance in the crowded bar despite not having seen him in years (and not having chatted all that much with him in college) and the fact that everyone there looks kind of like him (since there are a lot of German-looking fans, the two teams participating being German and all).
Then, throw in all the same considerations from the point of view of this acquaintance- that multiplies all the above by two. It's a small mystery that anyone ever runs into anyone, anywhere.
We chatted like old friends (which we weren't). Still, it was an enjoyable moment. Chatting with him gave me new perspective on the match. He was a Bayern fan- not surprising given the Bayern-sponsored T-Mobile jersey he was wearing. I understood after speaking with him that a loss in this game would put the team into Buffalo Bills territory- perennial big-game losers- and this is a fate I could not wish on anyone.
But I knew better. Bayern were loaded. The rich always get- or buy- second chances. Bayern, in fact, were on their third chance (9).
To the delight of all the capitalists out there, at full-time the rich got richer: Bayern won, Goliath bought a new sling, and everyone got drunk in New York.
Footnotes / imagined complaints
1. There is always an exception
I locked myself in a room and vowed not to come out until I came up with one good reason why anybody growing up outside Manchester would become a Manchester United fan. I finally came up with one just seconds before dying from starvation- the 1999 Champions League final.
In this match, Bayern Munich took a 1-0 lead through an early free kick. The score remained 1-0 until the last minute when United scored. Fancy a little extra time?
Not so fast- United stormed down the field again, won a corner, and scored! Two goals in two minutes! The first time I saw highlights of this was on Youtube, six years after the fact, and I was still blown away. I imagine seeing that happen, live (even if on TV), as an impressionable youth, would hook anyone on the team for a (miserable) lifetime to come.
2. Just like at recess...
Of course, in the past teams simply played again after a tie. Imagine that! The old-fashioned do-over. If it worked at elementary school recess, it probably would work in the Champions League. Why not reinstate this rule now? Let's blame TV.
The real reason why the game ends in a shootout is because the players are on the verge of collapse. Most players run close to ten miles per game. Adding any additional amount of extra time on top of the standard thirty minutes would be like the Boston Marathon using an impromptu 5K from MIT and back to break a tie.
3. Just so everyone is clear...
This tournament, featuring teams made up only of women, is not to be confused with the Men's World Cup, which is (somehow) a more popular tournament that differentiates itself by allowing rosters only made up of men.
4. TOA is ad-free. I think...
Not to mention my lifelong allergy to salespeople.
5. Confirmation bias 101
I should point out here that I am basing my observation solely on my own experiences. When I used to visit my brother in Madison, I took a bus from Milwaukee across the state. I never once thought 'wow, look at all the booming interest in soccer'. I saw a lot of cows, cheese, and Green Bay Packers fans. I do not expect this to ever change in Wisconsin.
6. Not a storyline for the game, however, or at least as far as I knew...
I found that out while researching this post, unfortunately- it would have been interesting to know during the game...
To be fair, the $2 million sum this loan amounted to pales in comparison to what the Dallas Cowboys contribute each year in revenue sharing.
7. "For fifty bucks, I'd put my face in the soup and blow!"
Seinfeld covered a similar idea in this episode.
8. Jurgen Klopp
Klopp took over Liverpool in the fall of 2015. Since he's taken charge, I've had the pleasure of watching his management tactics change the culture of the club. As of today, he has the team poised to compete consistently for titles every year, an unimaginable feat considering where the club was financially just under a decade ago.
9. And you know what...
With Gotze joining the fold sometime in the next two hours, you could argue Bayern were already buying their fourth chance. Whether they would need it or not was the only question of this final.
