{"id":356,"date":"2007-03-24T10:17:08","date_gmt":"2007-03-23T23:17:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/2007\/03\/24\/soccer-versus-television\/"},"modified":"2007-10-07T19:59:20","modified_gmt":"2007-10-07T09:59:20","slug":"soccer-versus-television","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/2007\/03\/24\/soccer-versus-television\/","title":{"rendered":"Soccer versus Television"},"content":{"rendered":"

I once mentioned<\/a> that I don’t like watching soccer on television.<\/p>\n

This wasn’t an attack on the game of soccer. It was an attack on the medium of television.<\/p>\n

Soccer, like many team field sports, has a very important tactical element. A team needs to ensure its players are in the optimal positions on the field. A player needs to pass to the best person to maximise their advantage. <\/p>\n

Over the top of that, they must superimpose the realities of fitness and strength, ball-handling and tackling skills, accuracy and plain luck – but I don’t find that as interesting.<\/div>\n

What I find most intriguing about these types of games is the way that these global, emergent properties (optimal positions, best direction to pass) have to be solved by a group of co-operating individuals who are each severely constrained. Each player can only see part of the pitch (especially while they are dribbling or concerned about tackles.) Players have limited communication – a few short commands can be shouted. Finally, players have limited time; there is no opportunity to conduct a dialog to work out a new game plan immediately after a successful tackle.<\/p>\n

Given my limited field of interest in soccer, I want to see it from a good vantage point, where I can see these emergent properties unfolding.<\/p>\n

Yet, when I watch soccer on television, this doesn’t happen. The camera shots are, in my opinion, too tight. <\/p>\n

I invite you to consider this next time you watch a soccer game on television. Each time a player passes the ball, note which other players are in shot. Count the number of times the intended recipient of the pass was originally in the shot at the time the ball was kicked, and compare it to the opposite – the number of times the player passed to a teammate who was out-of-shot.<\/p>\n

How can you assess the skill of players in maximising the team advantage, if you can’t see what choices were open to them?<\/p>\n

That’s why I don’t like to watch soccer on television.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I explain why I don’t like watching soccer on television.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[24,21],"tags":[79],"class_list":["post-356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cathartic-rant","category-observation","tag-television"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=356"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}