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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   913 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for June 26, 2026

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Soccer fans, something that has bugged me for years: how does soccer manage to combine low scoring with highly predictable outcomes?

In most similar sports, low scoring and low margin of victory correlate with unpredictability. But soccer is the most predictable sport in terms of finishes, very rarely have we seen real surprises at the top of the table or at the end of a major cup. It's the same few teams winning the big 5 leagues, the UCL, the world cup.

Across every other sport, one score games are so close to a coinflip in luck that much of analystics consists in softening or removing one score games from the data. In soccer a one score margin is completely normal, two scores is high, three a murder.

I think it's because of the length of tournaments. Soccer has huge upset potential in single games, we've seen that already at the World Cup, but that variance gets evened out over the course of a campaign. Winning a competitive domestic league is a grueling slog, even though you do occasionally see a Leicester or an invincible Leverkusen (I'd dispute "most predictable sport", given some of the surprises we've seen, but maybe you have stats I don't). A knockout tournament also goes through a lot of rounds, including two-legged ties where you need to keep a lead across both matches and potentially extra time.

It's also worth noting that, for fans of most teams, the ones that aren't at the top of the money league, it's not really about the trophy, because seeing a trophy is a once-in-a-lifetime experience - it's about getting into Europe or avoiding relegation, or, for national teams, making it to the World Cup and getting into the knockouts.

the ones that aren't at the top of the money league, it's not really about the trophy,

As an American fan of the sport who is homeless and doesn't have this investment that's always fascinating to me. I follow the sports teams of my birth city through thick and thin, but I'm not happy if it is a down year (or cough cough decades). Soccer fans seem totally down win or lose. Getting the title isn't the thing. That's nice.

Obviously no-one's happy if the team sucks. The local football team I follow is going through a bad season (Finland plays summer leagues in football so the season is on right now) and no-one's happy about it, or some of the absolute shit games we've had to suffer through as supporters.

I think what the comment you're replying to meant that it's still interesting, since the battle is not only about winning but also avoiding relegation (or, if we're really lucky, winning the Finnish Cup and making it to Europe that way). The team's performance has improved but relegation is still not completely out of the question, so every game is still a part of a greater project to see whether we're completely out of the danger at some point.

I mean the amount of love that I see in Europeans for a local football team that sucks and always sucked is far higher than what Jets fans can put out.

If all you saw was photos of the most passionate Browns and Jets supporters and you didn't live in the same country you'd probably have a skewed view of how much their ultras liked the team, though.

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