Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Playing for a draw

I watched the Mexico-US game, and it was clear throughout that the US did not plan on winning the game. I've seen it before in other soccer tournaments, esp during group play. FIFA World Cup - The Euro, basically any tournament set up, where they award 3 pts per win, 1 pt per draw, 0 pt per loss.

There's nothing wrong about the game of soccer, per se, but watching a team play for a tie in soccer is just the worse. There's not an equivalent to this defensive strategy = boring in baseball (no hitters are 10x more tense and exiciting), basketball (ugly basketball still has dunks), or grid iron football (the 49ers before Kaepernick, still had big hits, big plays, etc). Basically watching a team play for a draw in soccer is the worst.

Is there anyway to modify the tournament such that teams, you know, play to win?
What would happen if the tournament changed such that they awarded 0 points for 0-0 games, while they kept 1 point for games in which ended in a 1-1, 2-2, etc draws.

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