Where Football Explains the World Tackles

by Alex Bellos

b) Sheffield Tuesday never won until they played on a Wednesday, so changed their name for luck.

  c) The man who founded the club was called Wilberry Wednesday.

  d) Sheffield Saturday were a popular dance troupe that toured the country and Wednesday wanted to copy their success.

  “That’s not fair!” How many times have you shouted that while watching a game? Football, like all sports, relies on fairness.

  We want the rules to be applied fairly, meaning that no one side is favoured over another side. We want the players to respect the rules and show compassion and respect to the other players and fans. This is called “fair play”.

  But there is also another sort of fairness, which we will be talking about in this lesson. What is the “fairest” way of deciding between two teams who have shown themselves to be equal, for example by having the same amount of points in a league table?

  Methods used to decide between teams include goal difference, away goals, head-to-head results and, amazingly, even the flipping of a coin. Flipping heck!

  Heads or tails, anyone?

  FREAKY FRACTIONS

  Alex loves looking at league tables. One reason he likes them is because the numbers are always whole numbers, such as 1, 22 and 43. Whole numbers are neat and simple.

  What you never see in a league table is a fraction, such as 1.818 or 1.794. You need to think harder with fractions.

  But Alex loves a bit of fraction action! They are to the (decimal) point!

  Until about 40 years ago, every football fan was also fanatical about fractions. League tables were full of them, because back then there was a column for goal average, which was:

  So, if your team scored 60 goals at the end of the season and let in, or conceded, 33, they would have a goal average of:

  And if they scored 61 but conceded 34, the team would have a goal average of:

  Sounds confusing! Just think of goal average as being the number of goals you score for every goal you concede. So, a goal average of 1.794 means that, on average, you score 1.794 times for every goal you let in. Awe-sum!

  TIED UP

  For almost a hundred years, goal average was the tiebreaker used in football leagues, meaning that if two teams were equal on points, the one with the higher goal average would be placed above the one with the lower goal average.

  For example, Huddersfield Town and Cardiff City both finished the 1923–24 season at the top of the English First Division, equal on 57 points. (The First Division was the forerunner of the Premier League.)

  But Huddersfield had a 1.818 goal average, compared to 1.794 for Cardiff. So Huddersfield were crowned champions by just 0.024. Eek!

  Back then it paid to be good at maths if you were a football fan. In 1923, there were no electronic pocket calculators, smartphones or computers, so most people would have worked out goal average on paper using long division. Frac-attack!

  DIFFERENT SYSTEM

  The tiebreaker now used in the Premier League to separate two teams equal on points is goal difference, which is:

  Goal difference tells you how many more goals you have scored than you have conceded. The system was introduced in the 1970s because it encourages teams to play more exciting football. We can do some sums to see why.

  Imagine Alex and Ben have a team each. At the end of the season, the teams have played twenty games each and have the same number of points but the following goal records:

  If we use goal average, Team Ben is better than Team Alex. But if we use goal difference, Team Alex is better than Team Ben. Who should come first in the table? Tense!

  Now which team has played the most exciting football? Surely it is Team Alex, which has scored more than twice the number of goals as Team Ben. In fact, the system was changed to favour high-scoring teams, like Team Alex, over low-scoring teams, like Team Ben.

  Is goal difference a fairer way to separate two teams than goal average? It depends on your point of view.

  Here at Football School, we think goal difference is fairer to the fans because it encourages more goals. Defensive-minded coaches, on the other hand, may think that goal average is fairer.

  Whichever one is fairest, when it comes to the calculations, goal difference is certainly easier!

  BREAKOUT

  Not every country uses goal difference. In Spain, the tiebreaker is the head-to-head results of the games between the two teams, and in Argentina, if the top teams have equal points, they will face a play-off. At Football School, we’ve come up with some great ideas for tiebreakers.

  THE GREAT WORLD CUP LOTTERY

  Luigi Franco Gemma was a fourteen-year-old Italian boy who took part in one of the strangest events in the history of the World Cup. In March 1954 at Rome’s Olimpico stadium, he was blindfolded and asked to place his hand in a trophy cup and select one of the two pieces of paper inside.

  One of the pieces of paper was marked Spain and the other Turkey. His choice would determine which of these two countries qualified for the 1954 World Cup in Switzerland.

  The room was packed with the Spanish and Turkish teams and officials from FIFA. He put his hand in the cup, grabbed one of the pieces of paper, and it was … Turkey!

  The Turkish delegation were overjoyed, since they were headed to the World Cup. The Spanish were devastated, since they were not.

  The practice of making decisions based on putting a hand into a hat or a bowl and choosing one of several items randomly is called drawing lots. It is an ancient custom often used to settle disputes. The lots are the items in the selection – and this is where the word lottery comes from.

  Drawing lots is seen to be the fairest way to make a choice when all other options have been exhausted, since if the choice is made randomly, then each lot has the same chance of being chosen.

  Spain and Turkey had finished joint top of their World Cup qualifying group, which led to the teams playing a decider in Italy. But the game finished 2–2 after extra time, and the rules said that in the event of a draw, the winner would be decided by drawing lots.

  In snatching the qualification, Turkey had lots to celebrate! They treated Luigi like a hero and even invited him to accompany the squad to the World Cup, since they thought he would bring them good luck.

  For Spain, however, the result was not a-lot of fun. Even though drawing lots is part of the rules, it never feels fair to have your destiny decided by something beyond your control.

  FISHY BUSINESS

  Luigi Franco Gemma’s fateful choice in Rome was the first and last time that a team has failed to get to the World Cup based on drawing lots. However, the World Cup itself has witnessed the drawing of lots twice since then, in 1970 and 1990.

  In 1990, the tiebreakers for teams finishing equal on points in the groups stage were the following:

  The tiebreakers are taken in order, so only once goal difference has been taken into account will goals scored be considered, and so on.

  In 1990, Ireland and the Netherlands ended their group on the same points, the same goal difference, the same total goals scored and they had drawn the match against each other 1-1. Lots had to be drawn in order to establish which team was placed above the other.

  Two yellow balls (one for Ireland and one for the Netherlands) were put in a goldfish bowl, and two red balls (with two numbers) were put in another bowl. A ball was chosen from each. The result: Ireland placed above the Netherlands.

  Using lots to choose between teams may be the fairest way if all other channels have been explored, but it is never as fair as basing the decision on something that happened on the pitch. The World Cup now has an extra tiebreaker: the team’s disciplinary record. In the 2018 World Cup, this method was used to separate Japan and Senegal.

  The Champions League has twelve tiebreak rules for the group stages, including club coefficient, a number based on results over the previous five years. Everything is done to avoid the goldfish bowls – and the anger of fans.

  THE LONG AND SHORT OF IT

  Footbal
l is not the only arena where the final option is the drawing of lots. In political elections, if the two candidates with the most votes have an equal number of votes, the winner is decided by lots. This happened in the UK in a local election for Northumberland County Council in 2017. To decide the winner, the election official put a long straw and a short straw in his hand, with the same length of straw visible. The candidates had to each choose a straw, with the candidate who chose the long straw being declared the winner. That’s why when we have bad luck,

  we often say we drew the short straw.

  TOSS UP

  Perhaps the most common form of drawing lots is flipping a coin, since the idea behind both is that the chances of any outcome are equal. When you flip a coin, the likelihood of it landing heads is the same as the likelihood of it landing tails.

  Coins are used at the beginning of every football match. One of the team captains chooses heads or tails, the referee tosses the coin so it lands on their hand or on the ground, and the winner of the toss decides which goal his team will attack in the first half.

  But did you know that coin tosses also used to happen at the end of football matches? Before the introduction of penalty shoot-outs, coin tosses were used to decide the winners of knockout matches in competitions like the European Cup, which was the top European competition before the Champions League.

  For example, in 1965, Liverpool drew 2–2 with Cologne in the quarter-finals, but the Reds qualified because they won the coin toss. In 1969, in the second round of the same competition, Celtic beat Benfica on a coin toss after their scores were 3–3 on aggregate.

  The heartache for fans when these big games were decided by the flip of a coin was one of the main reasons for the introduction of the penalty shoot-out. By the end of the 1970s, penalty shoot-outs had been adopted by the European Cup, the European Championship and the World Cup. Out with the penny, in with the penalty!

  ABBA-DABADOO

  Using a penalty shoot-out to decide the winner requires more skill than guessing heads or tails. Yet how fair are penalty shoot-outs?

  The traditional system for penalty shoot-outs is that the teams take penalties one after the other, so if the teams are A and B, the order for the first five rounds is AB AB AB AB AB. Once these five are taken, the team that has scored the most wins. If the scores are level, the teams take penalties in the same order until one scores and the other doesn’t.

  Ben is a penalty expert. He knows that penalties are not very fair because the team shooting first wins 60 per cent of the time on average, and the team shooting second wins only 40 per cent of the time. In other words, it’s an advantage to shoot first. This is because there is more pressure on the team kicking second, especially towards the end of the shoot-out when players know that missing the penalty will lead to defeat.

  Mathematicians have devised a new system to make shoot-outs fairer. The order of the teams is switched each round: the first five kicks of each team are AB BA AB BA AB. By switching the order every two kicks, the advantage of shooting first is more balanced. The “ABBA” system may become standard in shoot-outs in the future.

  COOL COINS

  In ancient Rome, coins were flipped as a way of settling disputes. If the coin landed showing the face of leader Julius Caesar, it was thought that he agreed with the decision.

  Around 1900, the statistician Karl Pearson flipped a coin 24,000 times in order to see what the split was between heads and tails. The result: 12,012 heads and 11,988 tails. This works out as 50.05 per cent v. 49.95 per cent.

  Mathematicians in the USA investigating coin tosses built a coin-flipping machine, and estimated that a coin will land on its edge once every 6,000 throws.

  MATHS QUIZ

  1. How do you calculate goal difference?

  a) Goals scored + goals let in

  b) Goals scored - goals let in

  c) Goals scored x goals let in

  d) Goals scored ÷ goals let in

  2. What happened when referee Svein Oddvar Moen tossed a coin at the beginning of a Norwegian league game in 2015?

  a) The coin hit the head of one of the captains.

  b) He flipped the coin into his own mouth.

  c) He used a joke coin with two heads.

  d) He is a professional magician so made the coin disappear.

  3. Which of the following are NOT used as tiebreakers in the Champions League?

  a) Away goals

  b) Fair play

  c) Fart average

  d) Club coefficient

  4. If two coins are flipped, what is the percentage chance that both land on heads?

  a) 0 per cent

  b) 25 per cent

  c) 50 per cent

  d) 100 per cent

  5. What did Danish assistant coach Søren Randa-Boldt say when Denmark knocked Russia out of the 2013 Women’s Euros on the drawing of lots?

  a) “The Viking God Thor hammered it for us tonight!”

  b) “Lady Luck smiled on the Lucky Ladies!”

  c) “This was the easiest match of our lives!”

  d) “I feel for Russia; it’s horrible for them. But we’re happy and we’re ready.”

  Brrrr! Wrap up warm as we are going to one of the coldest and least populated countries in the world. Iceland is a small island almost halfway between the United Kingdom and the North Pole. It’s famous all over the world for its extraordinary landscape of geographical wonders – including active volcanoes, huge waterfalls and beaches of black sand – and its millions of puffins!

  Recently, the country has also become known for its extraordinary national football team, who achieved a remarkable feat. In 2018, Iceland became the smallest country in terms of population ever to play in a World Cup. In this lesson, we’re going to see how these modern-day Vikings have overcome the challenges of freezing temperatures, dark nights and a small population to become a team to watch. Huuh! Huuh! Huuh!

  THE LAND OF ICE, FIRE …

  Iceland is a freezing wilderness of rock, ice and fire. There are two reasons for this: a plume and two plates. The Iceland plume is a hot spot of boiling rock lying almost 2,000 miles beneath the Earth’s surface, directly below Iceland. Geologists, the scientists who study rocks, believe Iceland was formed millions of years ago when that hot spot erupted and hot rocks, or lava, rose to the ocean surface, before cooling and turning into the island.

  The plates are tectonic plates, which are huge pieces of the Earth’s crust. Iceland is positioned on the border of two major tectonic plates that are moving apart at a speed of 2.5 centimetres per year. It doesn’t sound much but that’s over 15 miles every million years. As the plates move apart, they cause openings for molten rock to burst through. Mountains created by the lava that spurts out are called volcanoes. Iceland has 130 volcanoes, and one of them will erupt approximately once every four years.

  When Iceland’s volcanoes erupt, the rest of the world knows about it. One eruption in 2010 released a huge cloud of ash that made it impossible for planes to fly across Europe. Thousands of flights were cancelled and millions of passengers were stranded. One cancelled flight was booked by Barcelona for their Champions League semi-final tie against Inter Milan. As they couldn’t fly to Italy, Barcelona travelled the 600 miles by bus instead. They were tired when they arrived in Italy and they lost the game 3-1. What a pa-LAVA!

  Iceland’s volcanic activity also means there are bubbling pools of hot water or vents of steam, known as geysers, all over the country. Iceland’s capital, Reykjavik, translates as Smoky Bay, a name that dates from the time Viking settlers arrived more than a thousand years ago and found hot springs that produced steam. Some of these hot springs are the temperature of a warm bath, so despite the cold you can have an outdoor soak all year round. Don’t forget your towels!

  But Iceland is not named after its hot parts. Ten per cent of the country is covered by glaciers, which are vast sheets of slow-moving ice. Glaciers are formed over many years, when snow doesn’t melt but turns to ice.
The ice sheets are constantly moving under their own weight. Freezy does it!

  … AND FAKE GRASS

  Being so far north means the days in Iceland vary dramatically in length. In the summer, it only gets dark for a few hours each night. But in the winter, it is light for just a few hours a day. In the middle of December in Reykjavik, for example, the sun rises after 11am and sets around 3pm. The dark, along with the snow and ice, make it difficult to play football outdoors in Iceland all year round.

  To solve this problem, the Icelandic FA came up with a plan to build as many indoor artificial pitches as possible. There are now almost 150 indoor arenas, which are heated and well-lit so the weather and darkness can’t stop play. “There is now an artificial pitch close to almost every school in Iceland,” said the national team coach Heimir Hallgrimsson. There are also over 600 UEFA-qualified coaches, who work on improving children’s technique from the age of three upwards. That translates to one coach to every 550 Icelanders, compared to England’s one per 11,000. Good facilities + good coaches = good skills!

  SMALL YET STRONG

  Perhaps the greatest challenge to Iceland having a good national team is the number of Icelanders.

  The USA has a population of about 327 million, Brazil has about 210 million, England has 53 million and Scotland has 5 million. Yet Iceland’s population is only 340,000 – about the size of a medium-sized city such as Reading or Coventry.