5 Reasons Why World Cup '06 Was Terrible for Casual Fans

(Last update over here.)

An interesting dichotomy appeared in the aftermath of this most recent World Cup, one that was not surprising but deserves to be noted. While most hardcore football pundits stated they enjoyed the World Cup as a whole, and most ratings were up in households across Europe and the United States (a misleading statistic, since World Cup 2002 was at difficult times for Europeans and impossible times for Americans), most casual fans walked away from the event scratching their heads. This was not only the result of Zinedine Zidane's actions (though those certainly did not help), but was more the fault of the proceedings as a whole. Countless Americans I talked to and even numerous non-sports-fanatic Euros found themselves asking, "What the hell do people see in this game?"

Considering the product churned out at the World Cup, in spite of the fact that most of the world's stars were on display, I find that to be a fair question. Therefore I decided to look into reasons why this World Cup was not only far below the standards we usually set for great football, but was actually a terrible tournament to deliver to the casual fan.

Reason #5 - Zinedine Zidane and the headbutt.
Tell me exactly how you are supposed to explain the headbutt to anyone, let alone someone who doesn't watch the game regularly? "Why did he do that?" I have no idea. I mean, I can show them youtube links providing evidence that Materazzi is as dirty as they come, but in that moment there seemed to be no rhyme or reason to Zidane's actions. He was sent off, his team lost, and Italy took home the trophy. That was nearly the end of it, until...

The writers gave Zidane the award for best player. Yes, Cannavarro likely should have won, but Cannavarro didn't almost singlehandedly destroy Brazil, while Zidane did. In fact, Zizou was generally brilliant throughout the tournament. But beyond the headbutt, how do you explain to someone that a guy dismissed for violent conduct in the final when his team still needed him was still deemed the best player? It's practically tantamount to saying, "We don't care if you are violent, as long as you are brilliant as well." Nice sports ethics lesson there. Is this something you want your kids taking away from the game? Welcome to an immediate black eye for the game and a lot of folks left scratching their heads.

Reason #4 - Brazil's performance.
As much as most of us hate the FIFA rankings system, they give people who don't know much about the game a measuring stick by which to judge teams they might not know very well. According to FIFA rankings and basically any sensible rankings as well, Brazil was definitely the best team in the world entering World Cup 2006. Sadly, in four out of the five games they played, Brazil were just short of bad, especially when compared to their own lofty standards. Thus, anyone tuning in to catch the #1 ranked team in the world and home of the FIFA World Footballer of the Year was treated to the sight of surprisingly stinky football. Nobody expected this, and yet there it was for all to see.

Obviously there's nothing to be done to change the fact that Brazil did not in fact play the beautiful game at this World Cup, but regardless, they certainly did not help improve upon a product that was clearly suffering.

Reason #3 - The Referees
Since the bad refereeing was nearly universal right through to the quarterfinals, the blame for this one rests squarely on the shoulders of our FIFA lords and masters. They clearly wanted to crack down on a variety of behaviors, but unfortunately did not realize the severity of their decree and also did not train referees properly in order to carry it out.

There were more yellow and red cards at this World Cup than ever before, and yet ironically, they did nothing to curb the type of behavior FIFA was trying to eliminate. Diving was rampant and there were a couple of matches that turned shockingly violent. Additionally, all of the yellow cards did absolutely nothing to increase scoring, and the inconsistent refereeing combined with Sepp Blatter's idiotic criticisms while the Cup was still going on merely served to increase the PR hit the game was already taking - a PR hit that likely would never had occurred had Sepp and his boys prepared referees properly in the first place.

Let me put this another way: any time a referee has a dramatic and direct effect on the outcome of a game, it reflects poorly on the legitimacy of a "sport." In no other popular sport does the referee hold nearly as much power to change outcomes as they do in football. Further, when referee decisions frequently seem arbitrary or wrong AND adversely affect the fortunes of one team over another, it's a blemish on the sport as a whole. With the Serie A scandal fresh in everyone's mind, I'm surprised there were not more nervous twitters about match fixing at the World Cup level. It's a good thing Italy didn't get any dodgy penalties awarded to them along the way...

Reason #2 - A Preponderance of "Simulation"
The biggest lingual sleight of hand in the game gives us the second biggest reason why World Cup 2006 was a stinker. I thought I was a pretty jaded football fan, but I have never seen diving to this degree at any level. Portugal matches were such astounding divefests that I found myself looking around the pitch to see where the pool was located. (It appeared to be centralized in the penalty area of whichever goal Portugal was attacking.) Nike is rumored to have floated the idea of giving Portuguese players nothing more than a pair of goggles and a speedo for their Euro 2008 uniforms. When watching Crissy Ronaldo, I eventually came to the conclusion that Greg fucking Louganis did not dive this much, and he was a professional.

This is one of the explicit detriments to the game that FIFA has talked about cracking down upon/fixing and yet this year more than any in recent memory, diving was a massive part of the game. Let's hope that FIFA figure out a way to fix this for good and soon, because when jaded fans are furious and frustrated at the effect "simulation" has on the game, one can only imagine how ludicrous it looks when a player falls to the turf like he's been shot only to get up 30 seconds later and take off at a full sprint.

Reason #1 - A Complete and Utter Lack of Goals
Believe it or not, regardless of what the sport is, people typically like to see players score. While the lack of scoring in football creates some drama, scoring itself is exciting, and changes in the lead are both exciting and dramatic. Of course, to have changes in the lead, you typically need both teams to score, and that failed to happen in 2006.

According to some excellent analysis by Peter Goldstein over at Planet World Cup, goalscoring at this World Cup was the second lowest ever at 2.30 per game, bettering 1990's 2.21 by the slightest of margins. There were an average of 2.44 gpg total during the Group stages, and a paltry 1.875 gpg during the knockout rounds. To give you some external reference, the knockout average is lower than the average goals scored per game by Chelsea or Manchester United (1.89) or Real Madrid or Valencia (2.0) by themselves during the 2005-2006 season.

In terms of suspense, there were 5 games out of 48 during the group stages that finished 2-2 or better (including the dismal-yet-exciting Tunisia vs. Saudi Arabia match), and 0 during the knockout stages. According to Goldstein, only 28.1% of games featured an equalizing goal, making it the second worst World Cup since 1930 for that sort of excitement (1990 again takes the crown by a small margin). Hardcore football fans can understand the brilliant 0-0 or 1-1 draw is a positive for the game, and I think casual fans are okay with draws in general, but a lack of scoring overall just makes the game look like 22 guys running around and flopping on the ground for 90 minutes. Numerous folks I talked to were like, "What's the point?" which is a pretty widespread opinion here in America. Let's face it - few goals plus fewer lead changes leads to pretty boring football, regardless of whether you are watching football for the fifth time or the five hundredth.

Football at the International level has become increasingly more defensive over the years (I haven't done the stats on domestic football to see if it too has become more defensive), making it similar to what happened in the NBA and the NHL over the course of the last decade. Officials heading both of those leagues took steps in recent years to correct what they perceived as a downturn in the quality of the game, causing scoring (and fans) to return to both with a vengeance. It will be interesting to see if FIFA are capable of making the changes necessary to correct this problem, or if we will be stuck with the "beautiful, boring game" for the foreseeable future.

Conclusions
The 2006 World Cup was a failure at bringing the best football has to offer to the casual and hardcore fan alike. Diving, violent conduct, shoddy inconsistent officiating, a dearth of scoring, and far too many games ending in penalty kicks are hardly what long-time fans love about the game of football, and yet these were the traits on display for all to see in Germany. In fact, if one were to package the traits of football you didn't want to see emphasized at the game's greatest event, these would likely be it. Therefore it is my conclusion that the 2006 World Cup was an unmitigated failure in selling the product of football to those with no more than a passing acquaintance with the game.



Note: For those who want to read my rant on World Cup officiating and what can be done about it, please click here.