Luck in Football

I wanna talk about sport (as my blog name suggest, sport and stock) especially football (or soccer in US).

Few weeks ago, i watched Chelsea beat Manchester United 1-0 at Stanford Bridge. A day after that, sport media around the world were flooded with reports saying Chelsea were lucky, MU should win etc. Columnist around the world commented about Chelsea were lucky to get the win.

I remember May this year, most football fans said Barcelona were lucky in their Uefa Champions' League clash with Chelsea. Then Later some people even said Barcelona were lucky to win the UCL (although Barcelona dominated the whole match and beat MU fair and square).

People, you need to understand this: football match is determined by no. of goal and only no. of goal. It doesn't matter if a team dominate 95% of playing time, have 100 attempts on goal or 50 corner kicks. If you can't score, you can't win. So i can't see what's the connection between controlling a football game and winning the game.

Although MU did manage to control the match against Chelsea, they did not manage to score so the most they can hope for was a draw. Chelsea on the other hand did manage to score so they deserve the win. It doesn't matter if Chelsea goal should be allowed or not. If referees said yes, then it's a goal.

Similar situation for Chelsea vs Barcelona match. Yes Chelsea did manage to control the whole match and scored a goal. However they can't maintain the lead all the way to the end and Barca equalized at the very end. Iniesta goal was a very beautiful goal so instead of saying Barca were lucky, how bout saying Barca finishing touch was superb.

Simple example: no matter how many time resources a student allocate to an exam, if the student can't write the correct answer, he will fail.

So there is no luck in football, there are finishing touch and goal. These are the essence of winning in football