Throwing a match

I have never been a part of a match where a team intentionally lost in order to play a different team. I have however been in a tournament match where the losing team scores 2 own goals to run the score up so the other team loses points based on the mercy rule. "Talked to Tournament Director team was not docked points because of situation." Losing team was warned.

 

Throwing matches in the auspice of gaming the brackets have been around since sports began, but throwing matches in the auspice of gambling is entirely. One could argue both can be intertwined. I have suspected one thrown match being played in a tourney a few years ago, but the soccer gods took care of that team when they lost to the team they wanted to play in the knockout stage.

 

The USYSA Nationals game involved round robin play where both were through to the finals (i.e. against each other) the next day. It wasn't a case of trying to lose as much as not playing. I believe one team kicked off and the teams then stood there for 45 minutes, perhaps with some desultory passes. Same thing in the second half. Can you imagine being a referee that's gotten the huge honor of going to Nationals and then this game is your one center? Ouch!

I did read about a game where there were some funky rules that made it to the advantage of both teams to lose. Eventually, both teams turned on their own goalkeepers (why they weren't in on the situation I don't know) and were trying to score own goals, against the stout defending of the opposing team!

 

And really it's the organizers fault. The teams are there to win the tournament. If the best way of doing that is to lose a particular match, the tournament has been structured incorrectly.

 

Absolutely correct. From what I gather, this is more problematic in round robin play involving strength of opponents. Badminton has a notorious structure that creates opportunities for serious match fixing in which criminal syndicates in the Far East have played a role in it.

 

While this is nice in concept, in reality it is a possibility in any pool-play model, particularly if the last pool games are not played simultaneously. In the World Cup, one can craft scenarios in which a team could believe that losing the last game of pool play would give it a more advantageous opponent in the first knock out round. I don't think there is any way to completely avoid it unless the tournament is all knockout (or double-elimination). And that's what happened in badmitton -- it was all about trying to game the brackets for the knock out stage.

(But with respect to the game mentioned before about teams trynig to score on themselves, IIRC there was a strange eleement in how that tournament was constructed so that one of the teams could progress by losing but not by winning or by tieing but not by winning -- which was truly insane at the end of the game. Can't recall the details.)

 

Hypothetically, if a team takes a shot on it's own goal and it's going in and the keeper makes a save with their hands, is it a DOGSO because the keeper has handled the ball? And then we can't forget that the pk has to go forward so they better not shot on goal...

 

Did anybody notice that Japan put only 4 starters on the field yesterday and that players admitted they had been told not to score so they could avoid the USA bracket?

If I had paid for those tickets I'd want my money back. There has to be a way to structure brackets so that isn't an issue.

 

Try to do it.

As long as more than one team per pool advances, a team may see a tactcal advantage in coming in second because of where they will get assigned in the bracket. Only way I can think of to make it impossible is to have completely random draw of all teams advancing to the knockout stage -- whcih could mean the top two teams face off in the first round.

 

I'll take that challenge!

Take the classic group of 16, 4 pools of 4. 2 teams advance from each pool.
After pool play, randomly place the winners as the home side for each game in the knock-out stage.
Their opponents will also be chosen randomly from the 2nd place teams, with only one restriction: you cannot meet the other team from your group unti the final. (I think you only need to draw 2 names from the hat, and the rest are locked in, but that shouldn't matter???)

The only way you would chose to come in second is if you were the last group to play, and all 3 second place teams were better than all 3 first place teams.
Very unlikely.

 

Double elimination tournament does it. The brackets going in are predetermined and it is never an advantage to throw a match. 24 matches max for a 12 team tournament.


Special bonus- the possibility of seeing the top 2 teams twice.


http://www.google.com/search?q=12+t...&hl=en&client=safari#biv=i|0;d|0Wk4DFGM1XBsmM:

 

That is why College World Series works. You can't game it or you'll pretty eliminate yourself because if you lose the first or second game, you have to win 3 games in a row just for the opportunity to play in the finals. Keep in mind this format applies in the Super regionals and regionals. You have really no choice, but to win that game or else you are risking it all.

 

I've seen this kind of situation in a few different regional youth tournaments. One case was similar to what Law 5 described; the teams just stopped playing about 20 minutes into the match. In one of the previous games where this occurred the referees decided to just halt the match. I say it that way because it really didn't fit the abandon/terminate guidelines. In fact, that's when things got interesting: What do you put on the match report? Yikes!

In the match that I was involved with, the teams "quit" playing. We (referee crew) just ensured everyone stayed on the pitch, the clock kept running and just hung out. Waste of time, yes, but it wasn't our position to do anything about it. We did have some trouble making sure everyone stayed properly equipped as the players wanted to start dressing down.

I can't really see how we have much to do with these sorts of things. Make sure the match report has all the details and let the competition authorities run with it.

 

Just noticed a badminton Team was banned from the Olympics for throwing a match for a favorable seed.

Can we expect the same for Japan and possibly Brasil?

#fatchance

 

Never experienced the OP's situation. Only ever witnessed teams clobbering the hell out of the weak. most massive over-competitiveness I've seen 14-0. At the half. It ended 26-0. I was amazed I didn't have to issue more than 1 caution (5th min UB(a)). The weaker team just played numb once the 6th goal went in. The winning team was super proud of their accomplishment.

 

I think my game report might read something like "Game ended in the 20th minute due to mutual lack of interest."

 

26-0????? I would hate to be the CR of that game. Just talk about misery galore. Sportsmanship thrown out the window, check. Losing team quitting on the game, check. Win it all cost and show no compassion, check. Shoot me.

 

As I understand it in the badmitton situtation, the goal of three teams was to avoid a first round match up with a particular team (which, ironically, had tactically lost for its own reasons).

Your model reduces the tactical losing strategy, but doesn't eliminate it. If one team is considered the team to avoid and comes in second somehow, then a team can still decide that the difference between the other 2 second place teams and the three first place teams still makes it a better risk to come in second. (The can't-meet-your-own-group-till-the-final, I think, also creates some interesting probability considerations, but I'm too lazy to figure it out. . . .)

 

Sure -- I was presuming we were starting with pools. While double elimination could be exciting, I just can't concieve of the rest of the world agreeing that was the way to do the world cup or Olympics.

 

I

If you go into the final from the losers bracket you have to beat the undefeated team twice in a row. It is still never an advantage to be in that position.

 

There is another solution, from the world of competitive bridge (yes, the card game). I am not necessarily suggesting that this solution works well for soccer, for at least two reasons: it requires sorting all teams in the knockout rounds from strongest to weakest seed (not just sorting the teams that advance from each group), and it does not prevent two teams from the same group from immediately matching up again in the knockout round (in bridge, usually there's a single large round-robin with all teams. so all knockout-round matches are rematches anyway).

The solution works as follows. Suppose 8 teams advance and are seeded #1, #2, ... #8. The #1 team chooses among teams #5, #6, #7, and #8 (or sometimes just among #6, #7, and #8) for their knockout-match opponent. Then the #2 team chooses among the remaining weaker-seeded teams. Etc.

This system is not completely foolproof. Situations can arise in which it may to a strong team's advantage to finish as a weaker-seed team. But it does appear to be an improvement over purely seeded match-ups.

 

Non sequitor. The post you quoted had nothing to do with a double elimination model, but with Old Refree's proposed model of randomly allocating the #2s against the #1s.

 

And this model would have the advantage of providing unlimited fodder for talk radio and internet chat groups . . . .