Inches

I wrote this following the Holland Spain game, but then I was too nervous about the England game the next day to finish it off properly. Inasmuch as it works here, it would work just as well with most games.

Well I don't think anyone was expecting that. Not when Silva's shot went just wide, anyway.

It was still the first half. Spain were a goal up from a dubious penalty, and Silva was through. Cilessen got a finger tip to his lob, and the ball went a foot or so wide of his right hand post.

If his right hand had been an inch or so to the left, the ball would have taken a different angle, dropping in off the post. Spain would have been 2-0 up, van Persie would never have given us the first truly memorable moment of the tournament, and Holland (probably) wouldn't have achieved such a striking demolition of the champions.


Now there are various ways of looking at this hand and the position it was in. You might think it was exactly where the laws of physics put it, and the odds on it ever having been an inch or so to the left were precisely zero per cent (give or take some quantum indeterminacy). On the other hand you might regard Cilessen as a free agent with his own free will (and by implication the rest of us, it's never to my knowledge been argued that free will resides in the mind of Cilessen alone), and the location of his hand as the expression of that in the physical realm.

Others have argued that the very terms in which such arguments are expressed define them as an analysis of human preoccupations rather than of the physical realm in itself. For the purpose of my argument it really doesn't matter much. The precise position of the hand may or may not be determined in advance, but that it remains incalculable in advance is undeniable.

The drama of sport depends on this, but not on this alone. After all everything else in life is this way, and apparently life isn't all about sport.

The other, crucial factor in making sport out of ball games is that scores should be discrete rather than continuous. Silva nearly scored, but he didn't get 0.9 goals for his efforts, he got no goals at all. In cricket, you're either lbw or you're not. The black ball in snooker's black ball final didn't fall, didn't fall, didn't fall, then fell. In sport, there's no fucking about with fuzzy logic. For us, Schrodinger's cat is always either dead or alive.

To sum up, sensitive dependence on initial conditions plus scoring in small whole numbers gives the world sport. Football is the best sport precisely because scoring events are comparatively rare, so large events turn on small differences.

That's why basketball and cycling will always be a little niche. Basketball whole numbers are too high, denying fans the big event drama of a goal, and cycling is full of decimal points. Cricket is a hybrid, in which run totals trundle along, but every wicket is a significant event.

Of course, over many iterations sensitive dependence averages out according to the laws of probability. This might seem to undermine the drama, but in fact perversely heightens it, as regression to the mean tends to keep well-matched opponents close.

Once, this even made basketball dramatic. In the final at the 1972 Olympics, the US team were one point ahead as the final bell went. Their Russian opponents protested, as the bell seemed to have been sounded in error, and three seconds went back on the clock. The Russians scored during these three seconds to win the game and take the gold. It was exciting, it was controversial, there was shouting and tantrums. Proper sport, it was.

I jest about basketball only being dramatic once, obviously. Basketball has been played all over the world for over a century, and I bet it's been dramatic several times. I'm not so sure about cycling, although I'm touched by the way they manage to care so much about the colour of jumpers. I have a friend who loves it, but it's perhaps revealing that he has no interest in other, more sports-orientated sports at all.

This is all very well, and by now you've probably forgotten my failure to establish an actual subject to hang this digression onto, but I've barely touched on the vexed questions of probability and permutation on the pitch. I do have more to say about them, but I think I'll save them for the next time I've got nothing much to say about the actual football. Between now and then, some real, honest-to-goodness tournament coverage. I promise.