On joga bonita (3)

The first semi-final is just a few hours away. I predicted this one correctly, but was wrong about the second one. One out of two, same score as Goldman Sachs, and given the unpredictable nature of the game, as discussed here, perhaps this is not a bad score.

Right, so football is unpredictable, and with so many countries playing, it is likely that many more teams will be successful at the World Cup football than in other sports. And at first glance, this looks to be true. A team can nearly win the semi-final in one tournament and then fail to qualify in the next, another can be the champion today and wait for eight years to score a goal (Netherlands and France respectively, both in 1998). Does this happen in say cricket? Probably not. There are less than dozen countries (at most, being charitable to some weaker teams) that make the pool of potential winners.

This is also the case in rugby and hockey. As is shown below, this has also the case in football if you turn to actual, rather than potential, winners over the past three decades.

Football.......................Cricket..........................Rugby............................Hockey
Germany (1974)........West Indies (1975).............................................India (1975)
Argentina (1978).......West Indies (1979).............................................Pakistan (1978)
Italy (1982)................India (1983).........................................................Pakistan (1982)
Argentina (1986).......Australia (1987)...........New Zealand (1987)....Australia (1986)
Germany (1990).......Pakistan (1992)............Australia (1991)...........Netherlands (1990)
Brazil (1994)..............Sri Lanka (1996)...........South Africa (1995)....Pakistan (1994)
France (1998)...........Australia (1999).............Australia (1999)..........Netherlands (1998)
Brazil (2002).............Australia (2003)............England (2003)...........Germany (2002)

No more than half a dozen countries provide the pool of actual winners, whatever the sport. The last non-favourite, non-host country to become football champion was Italy in 1982. Arguably, every cricket champion in the 1980s and the 1990s started out as non-favourite, and no host country has won the cricket World Cup. So is it truly harder to predict World Cup football?

What about club football? Manchester United, Chelsea and Arsenal between them have won all but one English premiere league since its inception in 1992-93. Two sides have won the Serie A (AC Milan and Juventus) and the Spanish leagur (Barcelona and Real Madrid) 11 times since 1992. If you know nothing about football but predict that one of these teams will win the next league, you will have a pretty good chance of being right.

Compare this with American sports. 10 teams have won the Superbowl since 1992. You may not know anything about baseball, but you still probably have heard of the New York Yankees. The Yankees have won the World Series only four times since 1992. Eight teams have won the World Series in that time. NBA appears to be more like European football leagues. The most iconic sport team of the 1990s must be the Chicago Bulls under Michael Jordan. But even the Bulls won only four NBA titles since 1992-93, and five teams have won the championship in that time. Surely predicting the winner in an American league is pretty hard if you knew nothing about the sport.

Of course learning something require resources. I’m no psychologist, but I’d hazard a guess that it is difficult to pick up a new sport after your 15th birthday. If you don’t know anything about basketball, rooting for the Bulls on the basis of Jordan’s name is no use as they haven’t made the last seven finals. And without rooting for a side, why would you want to watch a sport event when you could watch 24? Perhaps this is why football is so popular in parts of the world where local teams are not very competitive, even if the football tournaments that everyone follow are rather uncompetitive.

Meanwhile, I am going to stick with my earlier pick for the world champions, it is going to be Germany.