The author qualifies his assumptions so I don’t think it’s a classic circular argument. Instead its a statistical attempt to know the unknowable and as Twain or Disraeli or one of the Earls of Balfour said, there are “lies, damn lies, and statistics”. The combination of size, speed, strength, coordination and mental agility that makes athletes great in their individual sports varies from sport to sport, e.g., were Messi a basketball player, the best he could hope to be is another Muggsy Bouges, while Lebron would likely end up as a goal keeper.
And people wondered why I didn't like either team in the final. France, especially Mbappe and Griezman were arrogant as ******** in 2018 especially after a 2-1 win against Aus where they acted like it was 8-0. Mbappes face after the missed penalty by Kane was always going to be memed if they lost and serves him right. As for Argentina, their fans after just getting over Australia 2-1 massively put me off them as a nation. You scrape a 2-1 win against the worst Aus team in a long time, and act like you toppled a super power by a massive margin when it was a handful of Messi magic that bailed them out. Their match against the Dutch was disgraceful for how they carried on during the match with the diving and complaining, and then after they won the penalty shoot out. Will be very happy next WC when Messi is gone and Argentina struggle to get out of their group.
Cross posting a discussion to here because i know you guys are Fbref nerds Germany created shitloads of xG but managed to crash out in the group, mostly due to 10 bad mins vs Japan The post mortem has loads of narrative about false 9s and Fullkrug, but it seems to me if Germany actually did create the chances and didn't convert them then the tactical approach isn't the problem but conversion ... Flick has been criticised for identifying conversion as the main problem. To that you can add the defence gave up too many chances at the wrong times (germany went behind in every game - a worrying trend since 2018) But is this mostly just bad luck? e.g looking up players like Gnabry, Sane, Havertz - these guys are at least at par for goals vs xG in club football. Germany 1-2 JapanStatsBomb Live xG:#GER 3.25 - 1.39 #JPN#GERJPN | #FIFAWorldCup pic.twitter.com/v1V438JnKd— StatsBomb (@StatsBomb) November 23, 2022
Nah, we lost to the eventual world champions, and got a fighting 2-1 loss when everyone expected a spanking (hilariously like the one we copped this year). So no salt there, just find it funny certain countries are very frequently not very gracious in victory. On the one hand, I had to watch one of France and Argentina win the world cup. On the other hand, I got to watch one of France and Argentina lose the world cup
I guess i have followed French football just because Arse had so many great french players and i am a big giroud fan In rugby i can't stand them
Buenos Aires lost their minds yesterday. A few people falling off tall fixtures and probably breaking their legs and even worse. Also Messi and his mates avoided being one of them:
World Cup celebrations 🇦🇷😁 pic.twitter.com/ZRDvEBa5ma— 𝐂𝐚𝐬𝐮𝐚𝐥 𝐔𝐥𝐭𝐫𝐚 𝐎𝐟𝐟𝐢𝐜𝐢𝐚𝐥 (@thecasualultra) December 20, 2022 some terrible stuff in their celebrations
Bad luck or just somevariance. Also small sample size. In 3 games you could create 10xG and score like 0 and it'd be wild but not highly improbable. I'm sure you know but for others, this is why xG is better over say the course of a season than like 5 games.
The point he was making was that they were creating chances, so there was nothing wrong with their offensive tactics, the fault was poor finishing.
I wondered if there could be any explanation beyond just random variation I checked the form of players like Havertz, Gnabry, Sane etc and all were scoring at, or ahead of xG in terms of form We know that most of a players goal variation is explained by shooting position rather than supposed shooting ability - so I suppose the good news is, this will come right by itself? But of course Flick was widely criticised for saying that it was mostly a conversion issue
My point is that lack of goals is more than just poor finishing. As in variance, and that yes they created a lot but in small samples anything can happen.
Random tweet in my Twitter feed today. Looks like a way we can settle these “Messi is the greatest athlete ever” debates quickly…. Wayne Gretzky once destroyed Pele, Bjorn Borg and Sugar Ray Leonard in a race. And I mean destroyed pic.twitter.com/0E3vWQZeqX— BaseballHistoryNut (@nut_history) December 23, 2022
Gretzky is 5 years younger than Borg and Leonard and 21 years younger than Pele, the fact that Pele was as close to Gretzky as he was could be an argument for Pele.
I liked Emi. But damn he's a child in a man's body. To the point the French FA were angry and even Unai mentioning he'll talk to him about it. I can't recall the last time a player actually was obsessed with another one this way. Mbappe also beat him four times. Argentina won in spite of his inability to stop the frenchman.
You just described 75% of professional athletes. They aren't role models, and they certainly aren't global ambassadors.
You're right. I always forget. Someone once wrote on BigSoccer, can't recall whom it was about, that these athletes are like those guys in high school who are high and mighty with their superiority complex and have few actual friends, who never get humbled by life and basically never grow up.