CHANCE
The every four year World Cup matches in Qatar are almost all over. The teams that I was following were the United States, then England, because Kathe has nieces and nephews in England, Germany because Kathe’S brother was a rabid soccer fan and we used to call each other up when Germany played in the World Cup, and Morocco, because I was just there and know how excited the Moroccans must be to have their team do well. It turns out that though England and Germany are perennial strong teams that Germany, the strongest, was knocked out first, the United States was knocked out second, England was knocked out third and Morocco made it all the way to the third place game which they lost 1-2, after having plenty of chances and playing very well. In spite of that loss the Moroccans have gone home as champions, having advanced farther than any other African team.
But it is the second goal that Croatia made to win the game that makes me wonder about winning and losing and the basis for anyone’s excitement about winning and losing.
What I am wondering about is the part played by chance in a great number of the goals not only in this game but most of the games. It seems like when chance goes your way, almost like the flip of a coin, you feel tremendous for winning the game and the other team is crushed. After the game the commentators explain why the winning team was so much better and why the losing team was simply unable to win.
The second goal by Croatia was a shot across the mouth of the goal which hit the upright bar on the left side and bounced back into the goal at such a narrow angle, barely crossing the end line, that if it had been one inch further toward the field it would not have bounced in.
Skill would have been if the Croatian who kicked the ball had intended to hit the crossbar and bounce it at a shallow angle into the goal. That would have showed amazing skill. But his intention was to kick it toward the goal at point blank range. But he missed and it was only be the wildest of chance that when it hit the upright pole it bounced into the goal, leading euphoria in Croatia and tears in Morocco.
But this is only one example. Another example is that several games were decided by penalty kicks. Each team takes has five turns shooting a shot from about twenty five feet out and the goalie on the other other team tries to block it. Since the shot is coming from so close and comes so fast the goalie can’t wait to see where the ball is going. It would be past him before he lunged. Instead, he has to guess where the shot is coming, left, right or center and at the same time as the ball is being kicked lunge in the direction that he has decided on. There is one chance in three that he will choose right and if so he has a good chance of blocking the shot. But the point is that it is all chance. Certainly it is chance that determines the winner. Brazil, one of the best teams in the tournament was knocked out this way. The goalie on the other side guessed right on the first three Brazil shots and that was the end of Brazil. Pure chance.
Almost all the games were decided by the winner getting only two goals, sometimes one. So chance only had to work in their favor a couple of times.
There was near miss after near miss time and again and then finally the ball would go in and the team would race around like madmen, waving their arms and hugging each other and burying under a pile the person who made the lucky shot, who happened to be in the right place at the right time.
Almost all of the regular shots from the field are blasted from out of a swarm of people with no chance for the shooter to aim carefully. Instead when there is half a chance that it might go in the shooter kicks almost blindly and once in a long when the ball evades the defenders in front of him who often block the view of the goalie the shot goes in. It is only by chance that it hits an undefended corner of the goal.
So when I read a glowing report about how France is in all ways a superior team and deserved to be in the finals, even after losing to an unheralded team, Tunisia, in the preliminary matches, I, an ordinary viewer with no expertise can be quite aware that France got this far partly by skill and partly by pure dumb luck. Morocco was knocked out simply because some of their headers, which are hard to control and could as easily have gone in, missed. I can see that Morocco played well and that it was only the good luck of that second goal hitting the side bar and barely glancing that made Croatia ecstatic at the end.
Maybe I was the only one watching that was aware that while some of these games were won by skill that most of these games were won by good luck. I think that for everyone else that noticing the part of luck would spoil the thrill of watching the game which led to an almost out of body frenzy on the part of most fans. All that mattered was winning and attributing the wins to luck would have diminished this excitement of the fans who had flown in from far away to beat on drums and blow horns and generally whip themselves into a frenzy. The rationality of chance would put a damper on the whole event, so everyone put chance out of their minds and attributed everything to skill and national character.
Let’s see what part chance plays in the final game.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 