FRANCE
98
luck
One part of the question of luck
is the determination of opponency. First part is the draw, the second is
the outcome of the other groups:
When you look at the 4 places
for the semi-finals, each place is played out by a group of 4 teams who
qualified for the last 16:
i) Brazil, Nigeria, Chile, Danmark
ii) France, Italy, Paraguay,
Norway
iii) Germany, Romania, Mexico,
Croatia
iv) Netherlands, Argentina, Yugoslavia,
England
It looks very much like that fourth
group is much heavier than the others. This came from the Romania-England
match and has a huge influence on the chances for the particular teams.
It can be said that the Argentina/England winner has only 50:50 matches
in those play-offs. The probability to win four consecutive 50:50 matches
is only 6,25% (0.5*0.5*0.5*0.5=0.0625). In the same moment the value for
Brazil can be estimated as at least double as high (12,25% - 0,7*0,7*0,5*0,5)
and this evaluation is not based upon the strength of Argentina or Brazil
but only on the strength of the opponents they should face.
One could see in the progress
that this helped Croatia, in the end was too much for Argentina and boosted
the chances for France before the semi-finals:
France had to beat only
1 world class-opponent on their way to the final, Italy. And they weren't
even capable to beat them (won on penalties after 0-0 aet)!
How many world class opponents
did the others have to beat in the 3 preceding knock-out rounds to reach
the final (or would have had to)?:
Italy 1 (France)
Brazil 1 (Netherlands)
Netherlands 2 (Argentina,
Brazil)
Argentina 3 (England,
Netherlands, Brazil)
England 3 (England, Netherlands,
Brazil)
Germany 1 (France)
Croatia 2 (Germany, France)
Before the semi-finals because
of this 'bounce', just by the influence on how the opponents were determined
without any influence of the teams themselves, a final Brazil-France is
the most likely. But surprises are never excluded.
referees, penalties or golden
goal?
When Platini said after
the France-Paraguay match, he prefers the Golden Goal to penalties he forgot
that it had not been forbidden to score in the old extra-time mode as well.
Referees definitively do not want to make mistakes. They do not want to
give penalties that are not inevitable and their assistants prefer a wrong
offside call to a goal that turns out to be offside later. At least this
has been the impression of the England-Argentina match.
The influence of refereeing
in some play-off matches cannot be denied. But this problem is not only
one of the referees, whether they are professionals or not, whether they
are European or South-American, it is a problem inherit in the rules and
the way they are interpreted. This will be part of a further review after
the tournament to be announced later.
Extra-time might have been
a problem for Paraguay as the players are based in South America where
in international competitions it comes down to penalties right away without
extra-time what seems very unsatisfying as the number of penalty shoot-outs
deciding important matches is far too high then.
the development of matches decided
on penalty shoot-outs
In
the following tables and diagrams you can see the development of penalty
decisions in most important international tournaments
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