Although my electronic ramblings don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy mixed-up world, I will try to invoke the power of the interweb in helping to stop one of the worst trends in football journalism: the goals-per-game average. Let me explain.
Modern football is awash in analysis, coverage, angles and interviews, in short, representation, and as such there is an erosion of what Walter Benjamin might call the 'aura' of the event itself, the football match. Watching those grainy old films of Cruiff's first-touches, Garrincha's dancing feet, and Best's paper legs, you might get the sense that football was better back in the day before it got so 'corporate' with all those multi-angle replays of scrappy touchline fouls.
Then you go pick up a copy of Eduardo Galleano's Soccer in Sun and Shadow and start telling your friends that, "football is dead man; it sold out," ignorant all the while that football has had its fair share of turgid shank-and-hoof affairs in the age of Pele and Beckenbauer. Perhaps it's easy to forget because games like Austria v. West Germany World Cup 1982 don't usually end up on ESPN Classic Games.
I find one or two of these "football was better in the seventies" types always make their appearance at the start of a major international tournament like Euro 2008. I usually end up asking them what is the one objectively quantifiable aspect of a cracking football match that will show a sloping downward curve from 1900 to 2008? Switzerland v. Czech Republic for example was a turd of of match, but Portugal v. Turkey was pretty good. Why? Because the passes were better? The ball didn't go out in to touch as often? The play was speedy? There was a lot of individual skill and team fluidity?
Football is beautiful in part because it's low-scoring, fluid, generally impressionistic rather than epistemic. However it does leave a slight vapour trail in the form of the goals-per-game average, the laziest of statistical modes of analysis and the least revealing. And since there is nothing else to grab onto, is tends to be most commonly invoked by the "football is drowning in its own putrid greed" brigade to demonstrate how old-fashioned goalsgoalsgoals soccer is dead.
So here is my plea at the start of Euro 2008: please, PLEASE do not use this statistic. Do not record it, calculate it, or refer to in any way. If any of your friends or loved ones use this statistic, please politely tell them to stop. Nil-nil draws have an honoured place in the game. Together, we can get a hold of ourselves and give modern football a chance.
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