TGIF...Footy is back with a draw...and a dispatch from Arlington, Massachusetts.
Dusty Martin kicks the first goal, Carlton chokes—can we get back to cricket, please?
Clearly written without the comforts of hindsight. And then I take a glance at the morning news to see that Richmond and Carlton played a bloody tie—my multi is stuffed!—that's a form of wagering, apologies.
The tie is really ironic when one of the calling cards of Australian Rules Football (Aussie Rules) is that there are no boring draws like there are in Association Football (Soccer).
My god, have I not had that shovelled down my neck the past 25 years? I normally reply stubbornly, "If Aussie Rules is that good, how come nobody else in the world plays it?" And the predictable response is, “because nobody else is tough enough to play our game!—without pads!” And there it ends!
Also interesting to note is that the Melbourne sports radio station, SEN 1116, had an ex-AFL coach strategising the first round of matches yesterday morning. Brenton Sanderson said, with a healthy dose of conviction, "you can count on two certainties to come out of round one: there will be nine winners and nine losers." Don’t think so—wrong on both counts, Mr. Sanderson! That’s why he’s an ex-AFL coach. Ouch.
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Where to now? Well, I might try to connect three football codes: Australian rules football (AFL), Soccer (EPL), and American Football (NFL)—with the help of a reader who resides in a liberal-leaning suburb of Boston, MA.
Here goes.
Credit for the analysis goes to Mr. Chris Saunders, from Arlington, Massachusetts.
Why is football (soccer) such a beautiful game?
This is the question Chris Saunders, asked himself, and a bunch of his old college friends. “The overall intention was to just provoke a few of my friends.” Chris said.
And the email communication I received from Chris, and below his note to his college buddies, with plenty of supporting evidence!
Nick, here is an email I sent to my college mates to provoke a reaction. It compares the NFL with the English Premier League for the 2018 seasons. We thought that was a fair comparison since the World Cup has a skewed population. I also did an analysis of the 2018 World Cup for both men and women.
Enjoying the read? If you feel like it, I’d love if you’d share this post with your friends! Or, if you received it from a friend, please forward to another.
The National Football League (NFL) vs The English Premier League (EPL) – 2018/19
I looked at all of the games for the 2018 seasons of the EPL and the NFL. What I found confirmed a lot of what we already know—that soccer is boring and sad—but did offer an insight or two of why people might watch the dreary mess.
We all know that there isn’t much scoring in soccer, and the TV highlights consist of one or two goals and then a montage of all the times they didn’t score (how those images are different for all the other times they didn’t score, I can’t tell). It must be that soccer fans really like foreplay...
Anyways, you can see that the average football (NFL) game has 2.4 times more scoring than a soccer match (EPL) (for football, 7pts points equal 1 "score"). It is even worse (3.5x) when you look at the total number of scoring plays (this includes field goals, safeties, and the really rare 'return of extra points').
Surprisingly, there are not as many ties (draws) in soccer as it seems. Less than 20% of games in the EPL end in a tie (draw), and only 6% of games end in the dreaded nil-nil tie (draw).
But things get worse when you look at the 'wins'. Over half of the wins in the EPL are shutouts. Over all of the games, less than 40% of games have a winner where both teams score.
Looking at it a different way, only in half of the games do both teams score in the EPL, compared to 93% of NFL games.
Are soccer games even competitive?
It gets worse. While the difference in the number of games where the first team to score wins between the two is small (only 10 % pts), the number of comeback wins in the EPL is pathetically small. When watching NFL games, out of every 10 games you watch, four will have a team comeback from a deficit and win the game. In soccer, it's 1 out of 10.
So, once a team scores in soccer, you can switch over to a real football game and watch some action, since the best you could hope for in the soccer match is that the other team might tie it up (11% of the time you would be wrong – not worth the effort).
Not only that, you will be waiting over four times as long to see a goal in the EPL. On average, you will have to watch them kick the ball around the midfield for half an hour before someone breaks away and slips in a goal. Then the player runs around like they won the world cup, which they didn’t—they just scored against Burnley... in January!
But I did say in the beginning that I would offer a reason why these seemingly normal people (and the British are, if anything, normal) would watch such farce. With the overall lack of scoring and it taking so long to score in the first place, your team, or any team, is usually just ‘one score away’ from tying it up.
I believe what holds the soccer fans attention is the potential to score (regardless if they ever do). In over 80% of a game, both teams are ‘in it'. Only 11% of games are blowouts (>3 goals). In the NFL, in 27% of games, the winning team finishes with greater than two scores (>14 pts).
So, like their sad little life, where they aren’t very successful and they can’t expect anyone to be able to produce or change anything, soccer offers more of the same. The goal of a soccer game, the reason why people play it in the first place, is to score goals. It just doesn’t happen that often, just like in life. In fact, it doesn’t seem to bother them all that much.
"Oh, my team didn’t score; oh well. Much better to play for the tie, or don’t lose by too much."—I believe this is quote from Chris.
And again, “I wonder why they bother at all. It's all about the possibility.”
"If we can score one goal. Just one goal. With one goal, we can take the lead, tie it up, or put it out of reach! That is why I spend my days on the couch, glued to the set. If my team can score just one Goal!"
“So, I’m not like that. I don’t want to watch a bunch of guys in the EPL kick around a ball in the vain hope that they might score. I have enough failures and disappointments in my own life; I don’t need my sport to mirror that.”
“Foreplay is great, but finishing is the best.”
“As for the World Cup, once every four years, with national pride and the whole world involved, just like the Olympics, sign me up!”
~~~
Thank you Chris, I’m sure he received the replies he was phishing for!
As you might have guessed if you made it this far, Chris likes the NFL, and his friends like EPL soccer. One thing they all have in common, though, is having too much time on their hands. I will find out where they all went to college!
Happy TGIF.
And, Happy St. Patricks Day. Enjoy a Guinness or two!
PS. Chris kindly provided the supporting data here, and here