Meritocracy isn’t a realistic aspiration

How are penalty takers selected? Conversion rate can’t be the whole story. Messi and Cristiano, who miss often enough, will always be their teams’ first-choice shooters.

We Ecuadorians are no wiser. We keep sending Enner to the spot. Sheer sentimentality, I suspect. It’s been years since he dispatched cleanly.

Mbappé and Salah missed penalty kicks this afternoon for Madrid and Liverpool. The commentators pretended to be surprised. Why? I’ve seen other horrendous misses by both players; everyone has.

Liverpool’s best taker by far, Mac Allister, was playing brilliantly and had already scored. He wasn’t considered for the penalty.

Salah is a good shooter, but Mac Allister is near-automatic.

I’d’ve assigned Madrid’s kick to Lucas Vázquez, another inspired player (he’d won the foul). He routinely delivers in the clutch. The weedy fellow has won five Champions Leagues, for goodness’s sake.

It’s his utter professionalism – in addition, perhaps, to his seniority and nationality – that earns Vázquez the captaincy when he comes off the bench. (Carvajal is injured.)

Anyway, I wouldn’t let Mbappé, that bundle of nerves, near the spot – not with the game on the line.

Ancelotti is no fool. His specialty is “team chemistry.” Stock me with talent, no matter how egotistical, he says, and I’ll combine the elements so they don’t clash. But his wizardry has limits. Madrid’s vaunted strikers can’t all function at once – not yet, anyway. Mbappé, the newcomer, is dead weight. His confidence has plummeted.

I believe that it was for this reason – or, perhaps, to prevent a tantrum or sulk – that Ancelotti allowed Mbappé to take the penalty. Not to maximize the likelihood of immediate success, but to promote the squad’s long-term success.

Even so, what I saw today, and have seen in many other games, shows that pro sport, so often celebrated for meritocratic purity, is in fact far from pure. If cutthroat Madrid and stats-savvy Liverpool defer to their Big Cheeses in big games, what are the prospects for meritocracy in a nation as a whole?

My take

Who do you want?

Barabbas!

(24 Hour Party People)

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Happy birthday, yesterday, to me. I watched Liverpool torch Leverkusen. Guy Fawkes fireworks exploded all game long. People like that sort of thing, you know?

My mother was unwell but still brought me a cake.

The weather was how I prefer it. At night, I put on I Know Where I’m Going! for more of the same. The boys wouldn’t let me finish it.

R.I.P. Dick, pt. 2; body-text fonts, pt. 16: Calisto; a Father’s Day joke

The Cornell Chronicle has published the best overview so far of Dick’s life and career. I especially like what it says about Dick’s contribution to the philosophy of science, and I like the reminiscences of Cornell PhDs Koltonski and Jezzi.

I also like the word “reminiscences.”

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The screenshot of this month’s body-text font has been chosen with Dick in mind. The passage is not a quotation from one of Dick’s books or articles. Rather, it showcases his patience. It’s the most self-indulgent footnote in the dissertation I wrote for him, which I set in Calisto.

Dick’s comment: What is tackling?

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Happy Father’s Day.

Tabloids

May 6, 2023: coronation day for Charles and his Queen Consort. Mark your calendars. Who knows when another coronation will occur?

Palace insiders told the Mail on Sunday that the Duke of Norfolk … had been tasked with making it a simpler, shorter and more diverse ceremony that reflects modern Britain. “The King has stripped back a lot of the coronation in recognition that the world has changed in the past 70 years,” a source told the paper.

One change reportedly being discussed is for a more relaxed dress code, with peers possibly dressed in lounge suits rather than ceremonial robes.

… the Guardian says.

The government and royal household will be conscious of the scale of the coronation in the light of the cost of living crisis facing the country.

Such backhanded compliments are often in the news. Guardian readers do not esteem the Royals. Even so, they lap up their lives and rituals like cream. Papers like the Mail aren’t the only ones beholden to the monarchy.

The Guardian is happy to quote the King when it wishes to take shots at the Prime Minister. No one expresses withering, casual contempt better than a thorough snob does. That is one of the most serviceable functions of the aristocracy. Just as civilians need soldiers to fight invaders and police to keep criminals at bay, the people need kings and dukes to show the most exquisite disdain for the politicians they elect, for their fellow human beings.

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Barcelona and Inter contested a thrilling Champions League match yesterday.

Meanwhile, I was viewing a mediocre match between Rangers and Liverpool. I turned it off with less than half an hour to play. Liverpool had just gone up 3 goals to 1, and the benched Mo Salah was about to enter the game.

Much later, I found out that he scored thrice in six minutes. The match ended 7 to 1.

The Super League

So, apparently, twelve ultra-rich European clubs have decided to form a breakaway competition called The Super League which is to rival the UEFA Champions League.

Motto: “The best clubs. The best players. Every week.”

The inaugural chairman will be Florentino Pérez, the president of Real Madrid – the world’s most powerful club thanks to the backing of General Francisco Franco.

Among the four inaugural vice-chairmen, three are U.S. sporting owners who happen to control Arsenal, Liverpool, and Manchester United. The company JPMorgan Chase (also U.S.) is reported to be the League’s foremost lender.

Nearly everybody who cares about soccer is outraged by this blatant “gated community”-style hijacking of the sport. Even horrid British P.M. Boris Johnson issued a powerful statement against The Super League.

What many of us hope from FIFA, UEFA, and the relevant domestic associations is that they ban these clubs and their players from all other competition.

Certainly, if this league goes forward, I’ll never watch any of its clubs again.

Poor Liverpool

… tore through the English Premier League this season in pursuit of some amazing feats. Would they join 2003–2004 Arsenal as EPL “invincibles”? Would they repeat as European champions?

They would not.

In the EPL, they lost to Watford.

Then, Atlético de Madrid eliminated them from the Champions League.

Liverpool could have surpassed Manchester City’s EPL points record. But City thumped them as soon as they clinched the title; and today, needing a draw to be able to accumulate 100 points, as City had done two seasons before, Liverpool suffered a lackluster defeat to Arsenal.

I watched on Peacock TV, NBC’s new streaming site, as Liverpool became also-rans in comparison to other champions. The futility was palpable. Jürgen Klopp, Liverpool’s manager, seethed.

This acclaimed team is, ultimately, a less memorable one than the 2015–2016 Leicester team that accumulated just 81 points.

The sports

Yesterday, Samuel and I viewed the best match of the last two or three years: Atlético de Madrid’s victory, in extra time, over title holders Liverpool in the UEFA Champions League’s round of 16. As brilliant as last year’s semifinals were, this game was superior – at least in terms of the overall quality of play. Both teams did what they do well. Both were fairly successful. The Liverpudlians attacked ferociously, the Colchoneros defended, and Jan Oblak was a monster at blocking shots. The Liverpudlians slowly clawed their way into the lead. But then the series was turned around by substitutes who scored three crisp goals. Thrilling, heady stuff.

I happened to watch this game rather than others because it was held in a stadium with fans. To contain the new coronavirus, fans were kept outside of other games played at the same time.

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Rumbo a la gloria eterna said the arch over the players entering the field of the Copa Libertadores Group A match between Independiente del Valle and Junior de Barranquilla. (This slogan, too, was in step with the coronavirus pandemic.) IDV won 3–0 with cracking goals, what Argentinian commentators call goles de altura – goals characteristic of the altitude.

My own team, Barcelona, lost 3–0 at title holders Flamengo. Elimination stares us in the face.

Dortmund 3, Liverpool 2

“They think they’re so great,” said Karin, “but, really, they’re just wankers.”

We were at her mother’s house and within view of Notre Dame Stadium, toward which thousands of red-clad Liverpool fans were walking. They were going to cheer during the pre-season “friendly” between Liverpool and Borussia Dortmund.

Karin & I returned to our apartment.

Using the Internet, I watched the game’s second half.

Karin put up a portable baby play-yard with mesh walls that her mother had given us. Jasper and Ziva immediately tried it out.

Dortmund duly won the game.

Some say these “friendly” matches are devoid of interest. I thought this one proved at least one thing, that Dortmund is better than Liverpool when everyone is playing at a walking pace.

Stephen watched from inside the stadium. He sent me this photo of the Liverpudlian legend, Steven Gerrard.

Now that the game is over, everybody in our family is going to hunker down again to wait for Ada, Ana’s & David’s daughter, to be born.

Yesterday afternoon, the doctors told Ana & David that labor was going to be induced. But when Ana & David arrived at the hospital, they learned that many other pregnant women were ahead of them in the queue. So they went to the cinema and watched Crawl – a horror movie about alligators.

A modest proposal

Another soccer final has been ruined by a referee’s decision to award a penalty kick.

In the first minute of the UEFA Champions League final, the ball ricocheted off the chest and then the upper arm of the Potato Tots’ Moussa Sissoko. (He’d extended his arm to gesture to a teammate.) The referee blew the whistle for the penalty kick.

A deliberate handball? Not a chance.

A penalty? Alas, by today’s refereeing standards, yes. The operators of the Video Assistant Refereeing system deemed the call not controversial enough to review.

(Here are some TV pundits disagreeing about the rule. As usual, Alejandro Moreno makes a jackass of himself.)

After converting the penalty, Liverpool – usually one of the most proactive teams in the sport – sat back and “parked the bus” of defenders in front of the attacking Potato Tots.

A game-long slog ensued. Finally, with just a few minutes to play, Liverpool scored again.

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In soccer, a single goal is momentous. It releases enormous tension. It affects all subsequent developments. But VAR has multiplied the number of penalty kicks awarded, and hence the number of goals scored, cheapening their value. And now the rules have been changed so that every handball, intentional or not, that occurs inside the handler’s box is to be punished with a penalty kick.

With this policy, and with VAR to enforce it, we should expect games to have penalty kicks awarded in them more often than not. That is, we should expect games to have more goals – and of the cheapest kind.

We should expect shooters to aim at defenders’ arms rather than at the goal. (Certainly, the Liverpool forward wasn’t aiming toward the goal when he kicked the ball at Sissoko.)

We should expect goals to be scored quickly – before either team has fully implemented its attacking strategy.

We should expect a scoring team to adopt tedious “bus-parking” tactics earlier in the game.

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Therefore, I offer a modest proposal for handballs committed by non-goalkeepers:

(1) Let every handball that occurs outside the handler’s box be governed under the old rules.

(2) Let every clearly intentional handball, inside or outside the box, be punished by carding, according to the old rules.

(3) Let every handball that occurs inside the handler’s box, whether intentional or not, be punished, as the new policy requires. But let the punishment be an indirect free kick inside the box, not a direct penalty kick.

Exception to (3): Let a direct penalty kick be the punishment for an unintentional or intentional defensive handball that results straightforwardly from an indirect free kick taken by an attacker inside the box. (Here, we’ll have to make a somewhat arbitrary stipulation, e.g., that a defensive handball results “straightforwardly” from an indirect free kick taken inside the box just in case, after the initial kick but prior to the ball’s touching the hand, the ball doesn’t leave the box – or something along those lines.)

This is the best rule combination I can think of. But I wouldn’t mind if FIFA simply went back to the old rules that focused on intent.

I also would accept this option:

Let FIFA’s new rules remain in effect, with the additional stipulation that all direct penalty kicks for handballs be taken by Martín Palermo.

Update: Perhaps the exception to (3) should include all free kicks, not just indirect free kicks taken inside the box, to discourage defenders from using their hands to block free kicks taken outside the box.

With this in mind:

Let a direct penalty kick be the punishment for an unintentional or intentional defensive handball that results, inside the box, straightforwardly from a free kick taken by an attacker, where a handball is understood to have resulted, inside the box, straightforwardly from a free kick just in case, after the initial kick but prior to the ball’s touching the hand, the ball touches no player outside the box.

A week off

It’s my jobless week in between the spring semester and the first summer term. This afternoon, I’m in a lounge at Notre Dame, hoping that the strangeness of the locale will stimulate me to write.

I lunched with my dear cousin, Vickie, who’s just finished her bachelor’s work at Notre Dame. The poor thing has lost 20 lbs. during her last semester. I asked if it’s because she’s been eating phở in the cafeteria every day. No, she said, she hasn’t been doing that; she’s lost weight because of stress.

She has some jobs lined up for the next couple of years, but eventually she’ll have to decide whether to go to graduate school.

She said that in one of her sociology honors courses, the professor told the undergraduates that she expected all of them to go to grad school for sociology.

I think that’s the sort of expectation that ill serves humankind.

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The last two days, I got to watch two fantastic Champions League semifinal games.

On Tuesday, Liverpool defeated Barcelona at home by four goals to zero, gaining a decisive 4–3 lead in aggregate goals and canceling out Lionel Messi’s superb performance from the previous game.

And yesterday, the Potato Tots scored three second-half goals in Amsterdam to edge out Ajax on “away” goals. Lucas Moura, the goalscorer, prayed fervidly at the start of the half, and by the time he put in his second goal, it sure looked like he was receiving divine favor.

Still, I felt badly for Ajax: they’d outplayed the Potato Tots in three of the four halves. And I felt badly for Messi, whose teammates had failed to oblige when, in Barcelona’s home game, he’d set them up to score enough goals to put the series to bed.

The final (June 1) will be a ferocious contest. They’re two very gritty teams, Liverpool and the Potato Tots.

The game

One team came to play.

Liverpool “stormed” for about thirty minutes, stealing the ball, creating good scoring chances, looking much sharper than Real Madrid.

Madrid’s thuggish captain, Sergio Ramos, ended this by yanking Mohamed Salah to the ground by his arm and falling with full force upon him. He injured Salah’s shoulder. Thus, Liverpool’s best player was made to leave the game.

Liverpool unraveled after Ramos’s brutal act.

Shortly after halftime, Madrid scored a flukey goal. Loris Karius, Liverpool’s goalkeeper, threw the ball off the foot of Karim Benzema, and it rolled into the net.

Liverpool rallied well enough to tie the score after a few minutes.

But, characteristically, Madrid resolved the matter by calling upon a substitute from its well-funded bench. Isco, who’d been struggling, was brought off for Gareth Bale (once, the world’s highest-priced signing).

Bale, the super-sub, scored with a bicycle kick.

Then he scored with a shot that swerved off Karius’s palms. It was a bad night for Karius.

The final score, 3 to 1, was as I’d predicted.

It could have been 4 to 1, but Cristiano Ronaldo, who’d been tepid all night, had his last scoring chance derailed by a spectator who invaded the field. The referee ended the game a few seconds later.

None of Madrid’s goals involved much constructive effort. All depended on isolated moments of individual brilliance (or good fortune) …

… made possible by a prior act of deliberate, ruthless thuggery.

See, this is why neutral spectators such as I cheer against Real Madrid. Madrid has great players, yes. But these players cheat. They don’t win by playing constructively (even Luka Modrić, who gave one of the best performances, did nothing but defend).

What’s the point of having these stars, if this is how they win?

The point, their supporters will say, is simply to win.

Then let them have their victory. This was a game that would have made Franco proud.

Trash-talking

The Champions League final will be played in two days.

Vicente del Bosque, who has won the Champions League as the coach of Real Madrid, as well as the World Cup and the Euros as the coach of Spain, believes that Real Madrid will handily defeat Liverpool. He doesn’t think there’s “even one Liverpool player who would improve Madrid, not even [Mohamed] Salah” (the quotation is from this article).

Actually, right now, Salah is better than any of Madrid’s forwards, but del Bosque has an excellent point. Player for player, Real Madrid is overwhelmingly the better team.

Then again, that is why Liverpool employs the “storming” tactic (see two entries ago). It allows a team to have a good chance, head-to-head, against an opponent whose players are more skillful. Already this year, it has allowed Liverpool to thrash Manchester City.

In other news, the legendary Xavi, formerly of Barcelona, offers this amusing analysis of Real Madrid’s defensive midfielder, Casemiro:

“Madrid break apart, seven players attack and Casemiro stays back on his own to cover the centre.”

Pretty impressive, right? Covering the center all alone? Not impressive enough for Xavi:

“He does not dominate space-time.”

Whoa. That’s a tall order. I’m not even sure if I dominate space-time.

I predict that the score will be Real Madrid 3, Liverpool 1. But I want Liverpool to win, and I think that that could very well happen.

There’s a storm coming

The final of the UEFA Champions League will take place in about one week, on Saturday, May 26. Liverpool and Real Madrid are the contestants. Neither came close to winning its respective domestic league this year.

How, then, did these teams manage to do so well against the cream of Europe?

This article by Simon Kuper explains a key tactical concept: “storming,” or relentlessly trying to steal the ball in the other team’s end of the field.

Storming is my preferred way of playing small-field soccer. Imagine playing a full-court press on a basketball court against opponents who aren’t allowed to use their hands. The odds of stealing the ball are good.

On a full-sized field, however, ball carriers have more space, and those who press must sprint farther. Storming is much harder to pull off.

Regular soccer is like stone/paper/scissors. Teams that specialize in keeping possession and passing out from the back are vulnerable against teams that specialize in storming. This is because storming creates turnovers near the goal. But teams that are good at storming suffer more against less skillful teams that settle for “parking the bus” in front of the goal with nine or ten defenders. This is because teams that storm are more vulnerable to counterattacks. They also thrive in chaos, which is what other teams avoid succumbing to when they park the bus.

This explains why F.C. Barcelona, the renowned master of keeping possession and inflicting “death by a thousand cuts,” continues to dominate in the Spanish league. Barcelona and the stormers at Atlético de Madrid both play against less skillful opponents who try to park the bus. Over the course of a lengthy round-robin tournament, this favors Barcelona over Atlético. (Real Madrid isn’t a pure representative of any of these styles. More on R.M. later.)

On the other hand, in the Champions League knockout stages, Barcelona must occasionally get past a storming team without relying on its superior record against other contestants. Barcelona faces much worse odds when it goes head-to-head against such foes. And so it has been knocked out by such stormers as Atlético, two years ago, and Roma, this year.

In its quarterfinal, Liverpool, a storming team, knocked out Manchester City, which likes to do some storming but is more of a possession outfit. Liverpool then outstormed like-minded Roma in the semifinal.

(In the English league standings, however, City left Liverpool in the dust.)

Of the three strategies, “death by a thousand cuts” and “storming” require the most specific personnel. (Just about any team can “park the bus” as long as it has one speedy forward who can retain possession long enough.) In particular, it’s hard for a team to acquire midfielders who are good possession-keepers and good stormers. The mindset required for making sustained charges into the thick of things is the opposite of the mindset for drifting into space, receiving the ball, slowing things down, and making judicious passes.

This is where Real Madrid, with its great wealth, has the advantage over everyone else. It has enough good players to try either strategy. When an opposing team parks the bus, R.M. can inflict the thousand cuts. And when R.M. comes up against a storming team, it can bring in players to switch out of its usual possession mode. Thus, at each new knockout stage, it adapts itself to its opponent.

This ability to match up well against a variety of foes is what allows R.M. to get through knockout tie after knockout tie, year after year, even in a very bad year. Of course, all it takes to be eliminated is one bad matchup. Liverpool isn’t built to win a round-robin league against good possession teams, but it is built to shred even the best opponent on a given night.

If I were coaching Real Madrid against Liverpool, I’d have my defenders simply kick the ball down the field and hope for my skilled attackers to retain possession. And if they couldn’t, I’d switch tactics and park the bus.

Whatever happens, I don’t think this game will offer much by way of midfield sophistication.

A Mancunian classic

The best game that I saw last year involved a league’s second-placed team trying to keep its archrival from walking away with the title.

The game that I watched today, while not as technically satisfying, was just as dramatic and probably will end up as the best game of this season. Moreover, it was played under similar circumstances: Manchester United was looking to keep its local rival, Manchester City, from clinching the English league title with six games to spare.

In the first half, the Citizens scored twice within five minutes. Their first goal was headed in by their captain, Vincent Kompany, who’d scored in previous title-clinching matches. It was a good omen for them; more importantly, they kept United from attempting a single shot.

But United played with greater urgency in the second half. Soon, Paul Pogba had scored two goals. United’s third goal followed not long after. Suddenly, the Citizens were reeling.

The Red Devils stayed calm and earned an unlikely victory. I was proud of my compatriot, Antonio Valencia, United’s captain. In the waning moments, he expertly ran down the clock as he very slowly took the free kicks and throw-ins near his sideline.

Afterward, the Red Devils stayed on the field to celebrate (though surely City will clinch the title in the coming weeks). The Citizens’ fans were in tears. All season, the Citizens have been described as perhaps the best English team ever to play. Now, they’re in danger of being remembered as just another domestic champion. And on Tuesday, they’ll probably be eliminated from the UEFA Champions League by Liverpool, whom they trail by three goals in their quarterfinal series.

Spain, pt. 386: On tackling

This is from my brother Stephen:

Xabi Alonso on English soccer:

There is a pause as Alonso reaches, again, the crux of the issue. A single English word he returns to that, unpacked, analysed and investigated, explains much. “I don’t think tackling is a quality,” he says. “It is a recurso, something you have to resort to, not a characteristic of your game. At Liverpool I used to read the matchday programme and you’d read an interview with a lad from the youth team. They’d ask: age, heroes, strong points, etc. He’d reply: ‘Shooting and tackling.’ I can’t get into my head that football development would educate tackling as a quality, something to learn, to teach, a characteristic of your play. How can that be a way of seeing the game? I just don’t understand football in those terms. Tackling is a [last] resort, and you will need it, but it isn’t a quality to aspire to, a definition. It’s hard to change because it’s so rooted in the English football culture, but I don’t understand it.”

The tackle is perhaps the greatest expression of an English conception of the game — physical, epic, emotional. By definition, reactive. …

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Come to think of it, what is the Ecuadorian word for tackling? I’m not sure. The behavior lacks referential magnetism.

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So it goes for soccer — and for religion — and for romance more generally. Fleeing solipsism, we embed ourselves into those narratives which seem most universal, only to discover, bitterly, that the tropes which are most sacred to us are widely disregarded or despised: not just by foreign interpreters, but also by our colleagues, and even by our loved ones.

There are some who are shocked or saddened because I’m not fond of Lent or Christmas; and I pity those who can’t sense that a backpass may be performed simply to sustain a pleasing rhythm.