Anonymous
7/13/2025, 9:55:43 PM No.149770540
Is it just me or is football tinpot? There is too much variance in results to the point where the "elite" don't really feel elite like in other sports or games. Take chess, it's clear who are the best in the world. Sure, a 2800 elo Magnus Carlsen could lose a game to a 2700 now and then, but it's within the accepted deviation. However Magnus Carlsen would never even draw a game against say a 2200 elo, much less lose. This goes for other sports too. Basketball, Handball, Volleyball, Tennis. In all these, there is clearly an objective metric that determines "elo" of a team, be it physicality, skill, dexterity, IQ, etc. With football, this is not apparent at all. Any team could beat any team on its day, and I'm not talking about a 2200 FM beating a Super GM in chess. In football, the analogy would be closer to a 1200 elo chess beginner beating a GM. It's incredibly tinpot once you think about it long enough. In that sense, football is closer to games like poker than actual sports. Skill and physicality matter, but not as much as luck and other intangible metrics like "Team Synergy" that don't really mean anything, given that the same team could win or lose against "weaker" opponents.
That said you start to realize that football stars are frauds in some sense. Comparing people like Messi, Ronaldo, Neymar, Haaland, Salah to actual talented individuals like Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, Ohtani Shohei, Mohammed Ali, Roger Federer, Magnus Carlsen, who perfected their crafts, having to rely very little on luck or other intangible entropic forces like psychology or team synergy, is frankly insulting. Not only are these frauds carried by an entire team of defenders and midfielders who are usually the unsung heroes, these "star" players can't even guarantee a strong performance or that they won't have a "bad day", and their "bad days" are a lot, for it to become obvious to anybody with a brain that these are not outlier performances but luck taking its course.
That said you start to realize that football stars are frauds in some sense. Comparing people like Messi, Ronaldo, Neymar, Haaland, Salah to actual talented individuals like Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, Ohtani Shohei, Mohammed Ali, Roger Federer, Magnus Carlsen, who perfected their crafts, having to rely very little on luck or other intangible entropic forces like psychology or team synergy, is frankly insulting. Not only are these frauds carried by an entire team of defenders and midfielders who are usually the unsung heroes, these "star" players can't even guarantee a strong performance or that they won't have a "bad day", and their "bad days" are a lot, for it to become obvious to anybody with a brain that these are not outlier performances but luck taking its course.
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