Silly Little Country

World Cup Road to Serfdom

Arnold Kling reflects on the lack of scoring in high-level soccer.

I have my doubts about the case for giving the better team a high probability of losing due to bad luck just for the sake of making the games more interesting. That seems to me like wanting to tax rich people because you don't like people to be too successful. It sounds to me like soccer is the road to serfdom.

Meanwhile Steve Sailer suspects the lack of scoring is no bug, but rather a feature. I had not realized how feckless the teams really are at scoring and his analysis is interesting. I rather like his conclusion.

Finally, low-scoring games are easy for fans to talk about because there isn’t much to recollect: a couple of goals and your favorite coulda woulda shoulda moment. In contrast, NFL games average eight scores, and, honestly, who can remember all that?

As for me the problem is not the amount of scoring, but its dependence on bad refereeing. And that is not the result of the referees being bad, but rather that the task they are charged with is impossible,

posted by Alan Adamson @ 5:21 AM