Skip to content

Category: Sports

Sports Make Bad Fans

Published by Josh on October 16, 2023

Let me preface this rant by making one thing clear: I love sports. I have cultivated favorite teams, who I follow passionately, in all of the American sports and several international ones as well. I’ve set alarms for ungodly hours to catch World Cup matches. I’ve sat in rain, snow, and sleet to see terrible football. I am a fan.

However, I fervently believe that sports have had a terrible, poisonous effect on the mindsets of those who watch them, in one specific way: They glorify zero-sum outcomes.

Many fields in life are collaborative, supportive, multiplicative. More hands make lighter work, and the benefits of ambition and initiative can be generalized to a whole. When one succeeds, it brings success for a whole team, company, organization, and often to wider humanity.

Sports, however, have a strict limitation of outcomes. In an NFL regular season, 272 games will be played. There will be 136 winners, 136 losers. There is no way by which two teams can combine to become a larger, successful organization. There can be no collaboration. No generative effect of compounding success that brings more success to all. The outcomes will always square to zero. 136 wins, 136 losses.1Yes, I’m aware of the possibility of ties. These only further prove my point. Listen to any American talk about ties in sports and you will feel the full fervence of our obsession with winning and the hatred of there not being a winner.

Worse, by design in American sports, every organization save one will end their season with a loss. Whether it is losing out on a postseason tournament or losing in that tournament, sports emphasizes the glory to one winner, and the futility for every other organization who did not reach that pinnacle. The penultimate is merely the first loser, seen as a failure and punished for that failing, even in having seen only one victory fewer than their final opponent.

Sports bleed metaphor into common vernacular, and this continual focus on winners taking all and leaving nothing for second leads to pernicious beliefs in the fans and casual observers of sport. It leads us to sacrificing more than is warranted (“Leave it all on the field”), undervaluing accomplishment and the educational value of failing in having striven, and the growth that comes from having done so, (“I hate losing more than I love winning” and “The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat.”), and the winning-focused mindset allowing for taking risks that would otherwise be unacceptable (“Swing for the fences” and “No guts no glory”).

Worse, this focus on one winner allows for a veneration of those we see as having won. We celebrate billionaires, when to possess billions of idle dollars in resources while millions struggle to live, let alone with even having the barest definition of “enough” should be ridiculed and reviled. Instead, we create a belief in many that, if given the right circumstances and opportunities, we too could be the ones who win. Who get the trophy, the glory, the fame. We’re willing to sacrifice equality and equity in favor of allowing a small number to win, while the rest of us continue to lose.

I do believe there is much to value from sport, in fostering individual growth, in building teams, in creating collective mindsets and sacrifice for a greater whole. I caution, however, that the popularized, artificial environments we create, where there can only be one winner, can be deleterious when applied outside these constraints. We can all win, and in doing so, we can all take some, rather than one taking all.

Notes:

  • 1
    Yes, I’m aware of the possibility of ties. These only further prove my point. Listen to any American talk about ties in sports and you will feel the full fervence of our obsession with winning and the hatred of there not being a winner.

Cups Runneth Over

Published by Josh on August 16, 2023

A writeup of the UEFA Super Cup

Football stadium. Original public domain image from Wikimedia Commons

The UEFA Super Cup is an odd competition to American eyes. A matchup of the winner of the Champion’s League versus that of the Europa league feels like the NBA Champion playing the G-League champion. Or the Georgia Bulldogs, the reigning FBS national champs playing against South Dakota State, the winner of FCS. Ostensibly, these are two clubs playing at very different levels.

A team like City, coming off a historic treble, and with over €245 million in payroll, facing off against Sevilla, with just under €80 million in salaries and who finished a dismal 12th in LaLiga, and who wouldn’t have even qualified for this year’s Europa League, let alone the Champion’s League, if not for the heroics of last year’s finish in penalties over AS Roma, should be a laugher. The sort of game played by the bottom half of the team sheet to pick up some early season hardware and work out the kinks in the new squad’s strategy and spacing.

Sevilla, in fact, played City in the group stage of the Champions’ League last year, getting stomped by a combined two-leg total of 7-1, with 3 total attempts on target through 180 minutes and a 60/40 possession deficit. 

Strange things can happen in a single-leg championship, however. A young season is filled with unknowns, uncertainties, and unproven strategic and personnel decisions. One game at a neutral site can lead to unexpected results.

Throughout the match, while City maintained possession at an even better 70-30 clip, Sevilla maintained poise and answered each question put to them. Guardiola’s lineup featured both youth and novelty, with Josko Gvardiol slotting into the back line, Cole Palmer put into the wing, and Kovačić starting in the midfield. He used players like Gvardiol and Akanji in unfamiliar positions, introducing them to his system of flexibility and usage, and which recent experience shows can take a year to feel comfortable fitting into. That discomfort definitely showed today. 

With the (sadly recurrent) loss of Kevin De Bruyne to another long-term injury, City still searches for the sort of engine through the midfield to drive their attack. In further losing Ilkay Gündoğan and Riyad Mahrez from the ECL-winning team, the predictable answers to the too-oft repeated question are gone. So far, they don’t seem to have found a new one.

Meanwhile Sevilla, while short in possession, made the most of their chances. En-Nesyri tested a back line that was attempting to accomplish multiple tasks. Guardiola has built a firm defensive line and uses them in multiple ways, in defining the defensive border, driving possession through passes from the back, and allowing Akanji to be regularly sent into the midfield and further, akin to John Stones’ role late in last season. While City’s back lines of often gelled into intimidating walls of dangerously multi-talented players, this early in the season they allowed a number of questions to be asked. Youssef En-Nesyri regularly asked them.

In scoring the opening goal of the match, En-Nesyri slipped in behind Aké and found space horizontally and vertically, taking a thumped cross from Acuña across his head and into the near-side of goal. Further chances from En-Nesyri kept coming, the Moroccan finding chances off turnovers and counters, with strong efforts by Ederson the only thing keeping Sevilla from further lighting the scoreboard.

Halfway through the second half, City still seemed heavy and uncertain, toiling under the heat and humidity of a Grecian August and a pitch that slowed their passing and transition enough for Sevilla to regularly find answers.

Two fouls after the 60th minute let City set up possessions and build a sort of static momentum, leading to a ball handed back Rodri out wide to the left and behind the box. A seeking cross found Cole Palmer floating out unguarded near the far post, who cut in to the ball and equalized with a fluttering header. Palmer was the lone scorer in the Community Shield loss for City and is beginning to look like an adequate replacement for Mahrez in the three-man attacking midfield structure. Guardiola watched the goal from his seat in the dugout, looking neither excited nor relieved, but merely accounting the effort and result.

Immediately after the goal, El-Neysri found a startling opportunity, with Ederson again keeping City in the game after storming forward to close down the angle and taking the opportunity away. The remainder of the match played at a similar pace, with both teams awoken to possibilities, and the dread of a shootout looming at the end of regular time. Despite multiple great chances at both ends, the game finished drawn at a goal a piece.

Sevilla have played in four Super Cup Finals, as recurrent victors in the Europa League. All four have gone beyond 90 minutes. The competition itself has gone to penalties three times since 2019. If anything can happen in a one-game final, even more uncertainty is baked into a shootout. Team dynamics and strategy are set aside, allowing a title to come down to two men with a ball between them.

Sometimes, though, all you need is a crossbar. Through four penalties a piece, Kyle Walker’s shot came within a finger’s width of being kept out. Bounou got a half a hand to the ball, which deflected hard, bounced high, and buried itself in the top of the netting. Seeking a tying goal to keep the shootout alive, Gudelj went high and to the right, fooling Ederson who dove hard to the left. However, the power carried the ball a little high, ricocheting off the crossbar and handing a victory to City in Athens.

City have their first trophy of the season, after a disappointing showing in the Community Shield, and will look to add more hardware to the cabinet with an evolving squad and tactical approach. They weathered the persistent threat of a Sevilla team who put every effort into a victory and fell six inches short.