Tag Archives: soccer

More rule/market design recommendations for international football-soccer

Posted on by

Lynne Kiesling

Like Mike the other day, I have been thinking about possibly Pareto-improving rule changes in international soccer; like Richard Epstein I have always thought about sports rules (and league organization and market structure) as interesting market design issues. Take, for example, the unintended changes in ice hockey and American football after the introduction of a mandatory helmet rule — an increase in the force and violence of body contact. This is as good an example of moral hazard as you can find outside of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

After the two ludicrous incorrect calls in today’s matches — not calling Frank Lampard’s goal a goal in the England-Germany game, and allowing Carlos Tevez’s goal even though he was ridiculously offside in the Argentina-Mexico game — FIFA’s hidebound refusal to use any sort of technology to review plays and calls is leading to even more anger, acrimony, and charges of unfair outcomes.

I separate the rules issues into two categories: issues affecting the run of play and issues with goals. Epstein’s recommendations that Mike summarized in his earlier post mostly pertain to fouls, diving, and other behavior in the run of play, but I think that the easiest and most beneficial rules changes to implement pertain to goals, not the run of play. A lot of these bad goal calls, one of which we have seen in almost every game thus far in this World Cup, could be corrected with two fairly simple and low-tech rule changes that are cross-pollination from American football:

  • Simple real-time video review of all goals, with the reviewer able to radio down to the referee to tell him that he made the incorrect call. Since the review is in real time, in most cases it should not slow down the pace too much, and you can have a standard rule that if a goal is disallowed the defending team gets a goal kick.
  • From the NFL: A set number of challenges (say 2), restricted to goal-related plays only that will trigger an off-field review and/or referee video review on the field. Somewhat redundant if you have video review, but it gives the teams a clean procedural opportunity to register a disagreement productively, which is impossible given the existing rule structure. As in the NFL, if you register a challenge and your challenge is denied, then there should be some kind of payment, like you lose a substitute or something.

FIFA contends that they do not want video review because it will slow down the pace of “the beautiful game”, and I agree that slowing down the pace is a bad idea. But I think implementing these two rules with respect to goals will reduce the acrimony and ire resulting from bad calls without meaningfully slowing down the game. The existing rules make the game less fun to watch and generate ill will because they lead to unjust outcomes.

UPDATE: Here’s Ross at The Science of Sport making my essential point in more detail. Here’s the money quote:

About two weeks ago, Sepp Blatter was quoted as saying that the introduction of technology into football would detract from the fervour of the sport. He said “Then the science is coming in the game, no discussions, we don’t want that. We want to have these emotions, and then a little bit more than emotions, passion”.  Sepp and FIFA want human error, and so human error they get!

Rejoice: another World Cup, another ball controversy

Posted on by

Michael Giberson

The World Cup is well underway, and with it another controversy over the new ball designed by Adidas for the tournament.  The Wikipedia page on the ball documents some of the complaints, as usual most of them from goalkeepers:

As with the Adidas Fevernova and Adidas Teamgeist at the two previous tournaments, the ball has received pre-tournament criticism, primarily from goalkeepers. Brazil goalkeeper Júlio César compared it to a “supermarket” ball that favored strikers and worked against goalkeepers. Other similar complaints came from Giampaolo Pazzini, Claudio Bravo and Iker Casillas. Italian keeper Gianluigi Buffon said, “it is very sad that a competition so important as the world championship will be played with such an inadequate ball.” whilst Brazilian striker Luís Fabiano called the ball “supernatural”, as it unpredictably changed direction when travelling through the air.

The TeamGeist ball developed for the 2006 tournament was similarly criticized, mostly by goalies.  As it turned out, though, average goals score per match in the 2006 World Cup were down slightly compared to most previous World Cups.

It may be too early in the tournament to jump to conclusions, but across the first 15 games just 24 goals have been scored.  That pace averages to 1.6 goals per game so far, compared to 2.3 during the 2006 tournament, 2.51 in 2002, and the current record low of 2.21 goals per game in the 1990 World Cup tournament.  Again, it may be too early, but it certainly suggests the ball is no nightmare for goalkeepers.

For another data point, the MLS has been using the ball all season with little effect on goal scoring.  (Well, my favored DC United has seen it’s average goals per match drop from last season’s 1.43 to this season’s embarrassing 0.83, but I don’t think the ball is at fault.)  So far this year the MLS has seen an average of 2.5376 goals per match (93 games played), almost exactly equal to last season’s average of 2.5378 goals per match (225 games played).

RELATED LINKS:

The Ajax soccer talent factory

Posted on by

Michael Giberson

The New York Times Magazine has a feature article on the Ajax soccer development program – they recruit players as young as 7 years old and train them to 19 years if the player is good enough to be kept with the program. Like the development programs of other soccer teams, Ajax begun their program to identify, attract and train young players for the Ajax professional team, long one of the best in Europe. But with more money being made by top players in the English, Spanish, and Italian leagues, Ajax has shifted strategy a bit, aiming to send players to the best teams in the world. The payoff? Millions of dollars to Ajax from transfer fees.

Not every player becomes a star, perhaps just a few will. But as the article points out, the rewards for developing and selling the contract rights for just one superstar can keep the whole operation rolling for a while.

HT to Al Roth and the Market Design blog, who said, “shades of both Harry Potter and Ender’s Game.”

World Cup begins in 5 days.

More post-season tournament design issues: MLS tiebreakers

Posted on by

Michael Giberson

For DC United fans, the MLS season is over.  While some fans contemplate coaching and roster changes, a few of us are still scratching our heads about the MLS tiebreaker rules and the complications presented by the final weekend of play (which had five teams angling for two remaining post-season positions. See here for an attempt to list them all, and an updated list.  See here for commentary.  Here a fan calls upon MLS to “stop the madness.”)

The combination of outcomes over the weekend put one of the five teams (New England, which improbably won its game) clearly over the others and one (Dallas, which lost its game) out of the running.  Three (Colorado, DC United, and Real Salt Lake) were tied for the final position and the tie breaker favored Real Salt Lake, which advanced to post-season play.

However, had New England lost, the situation gets interesting.  In this case, the tie breaking rules among Colorado, DC, and RSL would send Colorado and RSL into the playoffs.  However, if Dallas would have tied rather than lost its match, the tie breaking rules among Colorado, Dallas, DC, and RSL would have sent DC and RSL into the playoffs.

This interactive effect seems (at least to me) to violate an intuition about how these sorts of things should work.  Either DC was a better team than Colorado over the season or it was not, and whether Dallas won or lost against some another team in their final match should have little bearing on whether or not DC was better than Colorado during the season.

The intuition I’m talking about has been formalized in economic theory as the “independence of irrelevant alternatives” (IIA) principle. Formally:

If A is preferred to B out of the choice set {A,B}, then introducing a third alternative X, thus expanding the choice set to {A,B,X}, must not make B preferable to A.*

In this case: If Colorado is preferred to DC out of the set {Colorado, DC, RSL}, then introducing a fourth alternative Dallas, thus expanding the set to {Colorado, Dallas, DC, RSL}, should not make DC preferable to Colorado.  But the rules would have worked in just this way, had New England lost its final match.

Can this problem be fixed?  Why not the way that the professionals in Europe do it: first recourse in the event of a tie is to goal differential over the full season, then to total goals scored.

Sadly, such a rule would not have helped DC this season the way our defense gave up goals.  Is it too late to get Ryan Nelsen back at central defense?

*TECHNICAL NOTE: The formulation is stated in the simpler individual choice form, but the MLS tiebreaking rules may be seen more as a social choice mechanism.  Perhaps some form of Arrow’s impossibility theorem arises, meaning I’m unlikely to see a fully satisfying tiebreaking rule.  However, it does seem that goal differential avoids violating IIA.