football – Page 7 – Pertinent Observations

Copa Format

The ongoing copa america is probably the worst designed sporting event I’ve ever seen, in terms of tournament format. Yes, there have been tournaments that have come close in the past, like the Asia Cup 08, which had a funny format so as to ensure at least two India-Pakistan matches (but that ensured that the chances of an India-Pakistan FINAL were really low). Then there was Euro 2008, where teams qualifying for the knockout from the same group ended up in the same half of the draw. And then, in hindsight, there was the Cricket World Cup 2007, when two upsets threw out two of the favourites before the “real tournament” had begun.

But in the face of the current Copa America, all of those can be described as being extremely well-designed tournaments. The Copa format is so bad that I seriously doubt that this post is going to be exhaustive in listing out all its flaws. Since there are so many of them, and I don’t want to keep saying “moreover”, “next” or “furthermore”, I’ll do it in bullet points. The points are in random order

You have 12 countries in the first round which you want to reduce to 8 for the second round. What do you do? Four groups of three with top two from each qualifying right? Instead, they have 3 groups of 4, with the two best third placed teams also qualifying. So you spend 18 matches (2/3rd of the tournament) throwing out one-third of the teams! Ok but I understand (as Atul Mathew points out on twitter) this is the standard format of Copa so I guess I’ll let it be
The organizers seem to have clearly drawn from the experience of 2007 CWC, when India and Pakistan went out in the first round. And given how the first two rounds of matches played out, it wouldn’t have been hard to imagine one or both of Argentina and Brazil going out, which would have killed the competition. I guess that’s the reason the Copa adopts this tamasha of third placed teams and stuff.
The last matches in each group are not simultaneously played, and the “seeded teams” in each group (Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil) got to play the last games, and thus figure out what exactly they needed to do (fix it even, maybe?) so that they got a favourable draw in the quarters. Actually, as I’ll explain in a subsequent tweet, it was more like “favourable opponent” rather than “favourable draw”. Check out Jonathan Wilson’s piece on watching Brazil-Ecuador with a bunch of Chile fans
Now you have in the second round Brazil taking on Paraguay, whom they’ve faced once before in the group stages. Again, daft format that allows a team to play the third placed team in its own group in the second round itself. I remember FIFA 1994 handling third placed teams well, to make sure they didn’t meet teams they’d played before in the second round
Take a look at the quarter-finals fixtures, and do a sensitivity analysis of what would have happened if either Brazil had done slightly worse or Argentina had done better. You will notice that as long as Argentina and Brazil finished their respective groups as either number 1 or number 2, they would end up in different halves of the tournament! Oh, the lengths the organizers have gone to ensure they maximize the chances of getting a Brazil-Argentina final. Another off-shoot is again teams from the same group having to meet in the semis. For example, if Venezuela beat Chile this weekend, then either Brazil or Paraguay could get to the final of the tournament by not ever facing a team that started anywhere outside of group B!!

As I mentioned this list is unlikely to be exhaustive. And I hope for the sake of giving the organizers a kick in the butt, Paraguay and Uruguay will do the needful and throw out Brazil and Argentina respectively. They’re fully capable of doing that, based on tournament form.

Handling Jesus

A few months back, perhaps during the football world cup, I had talked about the role of Jesus Navas in the Spanish attack. He would mostly be brought on as a “plan B”, mostly when the Spanish tiki-taka failed to break down the opposition defence.

And by hogging the right touchline, he would single-handedly offer a new line of attack, without taking too much away from the existing tiki-taka attack down the middle. Though quite under-rated, I think he had valuable contributions in the Spanish victory.

So I was thinking about the conditions that are essential for the success of Jesus Navas. And the primary condition, I thought, was the support of his team-mates. For example, when Xavi passed the ball right to Navas, he recognized fully well that there was little chance Navas would give it back to him. Xavi would recognize that Navas would play his own game, and all he had to do would be to perhaps send Sergio Ramos to support and get players in the box waiting for the cross.

It is to the credit of Xavi and the other members of Spanish “Plan A attack” that they recognized this and allowed Navas to play his own game whenever he came on. If they hadn’t, Navas would surely have never been as effective. In fact, he would have been a complete misfit and failure.

You might want to draw your own analogies from this but what I want to say is that when you have a guy in your team who does things differently, who is there to “provide a different angle to the attack”, you need to create conditions to facilitate his work. At the very least, you need to ensure that all members of the team recognize that this guy is different, and what they need to do to enable his success.

Talking about diversity and diversity policies is all fine, but to get the best out of the diversity policy, you need to create conditions to extract the best out of the “diversity hire”, in whatever context you choose to view this.

Kabaddi and Jesus Navas

I’ve always talked about the Kabaddi style of solving a problem. In Kabaddi, when you are defending, six out of the seven players in the team form a chain in order to encircle the attacker. The seventh defender, however, strikes it alone, in a different direction, trying to draw the attacker into a position where he can be effectively surrounded.

Now there is a footballing analogy to this – the Jesus Navas style. Those of you who watched either Spain’s game with Honduras or the second half of their loss to Switzerland would’ve noticed that Spain effectively followed two lines of attack. The first was the traditional way – attack down the middle in a series of slow passes and build-up. Five of Spain’s front six players would get involved in this attack down the centre, almost rendering their game one-dimensional. And then there was Navas.

I haven’t confirmed this stat but in the game and half that he has played Navas has completed more crosses than anyone else in the tournament. He would strike it on his own down the Spanish right flank, hug the touchline, beat the full back and put in crosses. Minute in and minute out. Sometimes with a little help from full back Sergio Ramos, but mostly alone. It was fantastic to watch.

What this ended up doing was to divert the attention of the opposing defenders to cover Navas. If everyone were to have been attacking down the centre, the defending team could’ve just parked their bus in front of their centre and prevented any scoring. Spain letting free this one guy to take a different route meant that the opposition needed to cover that also leading to insufficient cover in the centre (it is another matter that Spain failed to score against Switzerland. But they did get so many more chances after Navas came on).

I’ve always been fascinated by such strategies at work, in business. You have a bunch of guys who try to attack the problem front-on, in the conventional way, working together, passing to each other frequently. And then there is this one guy who has been left out of this clique who attacks the problem “from the flank”. In his own way, without fear of failure. He knows that he is only an auxiliary solver, that he has nothing to lose (Navas lost his place in the XI after the Honduras match but I don’t think he had expected to ever play at all), and he can just go for it. The option value of letting one guy in the team loose in order to search for alternate solutions while everyone else is building up down the middle is immense, I think.

This is similar to Nassim Taleb’s “barbell investment strategy”. Acccording to that, he parks some 90% of his assets in ultra-risk government securities. They don’t give spectacular returns but his money is safe. And the rest of the 10% he uses to punt by buying stuff like out-of-the-money options. If they expire worthlessly, he hasn’t lost much of his wealth. The optionality (here, literally) of that additional 10% is, however, immense, and there is potential for spectacular returns from this strategy. with losses being capped.

Diminishing Value of a Red Card

Often when we see players being sent off AND penalty kick being awarded in the event of an illegal stop of a goal-bound ball, Baada and I have thought that the punishment is too harsh. That for stopping one goal, the team effectively gives away the goal (conversion rate of penalties is high) and also loses a player (sometimes the goalie) for the rest of the game.

Now, after last night’s strategic hand ball by Luis Suarez, people are complaining that the punishment is not enough. Though it was a split-second instinctive decision by Suarez to handball, even if he were to replay the incident in his head and analyze the costs and benefits, I’m sure he would’ve done what he did. This clearly contradicts what I mentioned in the first paragraph.

The main issue here is with the value of a red card at various stages of a game. The red card has intrinsic value – of being suspended for the next game. In addition to this, the red card leaves the team one short for the rest of the game, and so it is clear that the later a red card is given out, the lesser the disadvantage it causes the team because they’ve to play for lesser time with a man short.

What makes Suarez’s decision more logical is the time value of a one-goal lead. The lesser the time left in the game, the more the value of the one-goal lead since there is lesser time for which it needs to be protected. And in this case, the handball occurred on what might have been the last “kick” in the game, and so the value of the one-goal lead was really high.

The earlier this incident had occurred in the match, the less would’ve been Suarez’s incentive to handball – more time to win back the conceded goal and more time to play a man short if redcarded. At the time when it actually occurred, Suarez would’ve been a fool to NOT handball. The payoffs were heavily loaded in favour of handballing and he did it.

People on twitter are suggesting that rules be changed, that the goal should’ve been awarded anyway instead of the penalty and stuff, but considering that the same punishment costs much more if given out earlier in the game, I think the current punishment is appropriate. The excess of this punishment in earlier stages of the game is compensated by the punishment being too little in the latter stages, and on an average I think it is appropriate.

Let’s continue to keep football simple and not clutter it with Duckworth-Lewis kind of rules. And congrats to Suarez for taking the most logical decision at the moment. It is indeed as great a “sacrifice” as Ballack’s tactical yellow card against Korea in the 2002 semis.

And I feel sad for Asamoah Gyan. But then again, with Ghana being in the knockout stages solely on the merit of two Gyan penalties, it is only appropriate that they are going out nowon the demerit of Gyan’s missed penalty.

What Should Mexico Do?

If Mexico and Uruguay draw their last league game, then both of them go through to the second round irrespective of what France and South Africa do. However, on account of a better goal difference, Uruguay will qualify as group winners and face the second-placed team from Group B, while Mexico will qualify second and meet the Group B winners, likely to be Argentina.

Uruguay’s option is clear. Play for a draw. If Mexico go for a win, Uruguay should just sit back and try hit back on the counterattack (and in terms of players and style, they are very well equipped for that). Simple case of getting men behind the ball and putting gaaji.

Mexico’s strategy is not so straightforward. The “greedy” thing to do would be to play for a draw, in which case they will most likely end up facing Argentina in the second round (if you remember, Mexico went out last World Cup by losing to Argentina at the same stage). On the other hand, if Mexico beat Uruguay, they will top Group A and meet a potentially inferior team (Korea or Greece) in the second round.

As mentioned earlier, if Mexico go for a win, Uruguay will simply defend and play a counterattacking game which they are good at, so I don’t know if they are going to go for it.

Thinking about it, it comes down to Mexico’s payoff function. I’m sure their payoff is an increasing function of how far they progress in the tournament. However, we should be able to identify one particular “jump” in payoff – some kind of a discontinuity, where the payoff increases considerably for one additional round of progress in the tournament.

If this “jump” is for the second round, Mexico can afford to put Ranatunga Principle, get a peaceful draw against Uruguay and claim their “jump reward”.

If the “jump” is for the quarter-finals, however, then Mexico will want to take the risk at this round in order to get themselves easier opponents in the round of 16 (I’m assuming here that Mexico consider Korea or Greece as much easier opponents than Argentina).

If the “jump” occurs further down in the tournament, I think there is way too much randomness about their potential quarterfinal opponents (especially given the fuzzy results in Groups C and D) and opponents as hard as (or harder than ) Argentina cannot be ruled out. Nevertheless, they would rather face one tough opponent than two (and I’m assuming here that no team is significantly “harder” for Mexico than Argentina) and so they should put fight to avoid Argentina and thus go for a win.

Considering that they have reached the Round of 16 with reasonable regularity in the last few World Cups, I presume that their “payoff jump” will occur later in the tournament. And based on the above reasoning that means they should go for a win against Uruguay, so that they can try avoid Argentina.

And it is on this thin thread that the French are hanging their hopes (though first they need to thulp South Africa, no easy task).

Arranged Scissors 12 – Rejection Sharing Agreements

This is similar to the Klose-Podolski corollary to the Goalkeeper Theory. To refresh your memory, or to fresh it in case I haven’t mentioned this earlier, the Klose-Podolski corollary refers to a case of two close friends who decide to hit on the same person. The implicit understanding is that they don’t regard each other as rivals but blade together, and first get rid of all the other suitors before they engage in one last showdown so that the bladee picks one of them.

We came up with this corollary to the Goalkeeper Theory shortly after the 2006 Football World Cup, during which Klose and Podolki formed a cracking strike partnership for Germany. Later on, they were to play together for Bayerrn Munchen, but like most Klose-Podolski arrangements, they too ended up in bitterness with Poodolski (who scored the lesser number of goals among the two) publicly voicing his bitterness and finally transferring to his “native” Koln.

Now that the crazy digression is out of the way, let me get to the point. Today is the first day of Navaratri, and with the inauspicious “Mahalaya Paksha” having gotten out of the way, arranged scissors is back in full earnest. This also means that I re-enter the market, though I’m still yet to list myself (don’t plan to for a while at least. OTC is said to give superior valuations). And some casual conversation and some not-so-casual phone calls this morning, I have been thinking of the arranged marriage equivalent of the Klose-Podolski arrangement.

So basically, as part of this arrangements, two parties who are looking to hit the same side of the deal strike a deal to share “rejection information” with each other. “Rejection information” can be of the following two types:

Today I found out about this girl. She seems to be really good in most respects – good looking, rich, good family background, virgin and all that. But for some (usually random) reason, my son doesn’t want to marry her. Why don’t you try her for your son?
Today I found out about this girl. Talked to her, her parents, etc. Doesn’t seem like a good prospect at all. She is either ugly or too “forward” or her family background is bad. I think the chances of her getting along with your son is quite low. Don’t waste your time with her.

Note that both of this is extremely useful information, especially in an illiquid market. What is important here is the nature of people with whom you strike such agreements. The basic thing is that your correlation with them should neither be too low nor too high. Ideally, they should belong to the same/similar caste, should have a fairly similar family background, etc. but the boys shouldn’t be too similar. Yeah, I think that is a fair criterion – they should be as similar as possible in terms of “arranged criteria” but as different as possible in terms of “louvvu criteria”.

Basically if the correlation is too low, then you can’t really trust their judgment on counterparties. On the other hand, if the correlation is too high, then it is extremely likely that they turn out to be “rivals” and that if one party rejects a girl, it’s unlikely that the other party will like the girl. I supppose you get what I’m talking about.

One downside to such agreements that I can think of – it might cause bitterness later on in life, long after the goal has been scored. The feeling that “this guy married a girl that I rejected” or the other way round might come back to haunt you later on in life.

50% Stake Sale

It’s finally happening. My mother has decided for good that I’m unable to manage all of myself, and hence I should divest 50% in myself. “The better half”, she says. She has been utterly disgusted due to my utter failure, and lack of effort, in conducting this divestiture by myself, and has now decided to take matters into her own hands.

Her second sister, along with her husband, has been appointed the lead investment banker for this deal. My mother’s eldest sister is going to be the chief scout in order to scout for possible counterparties to the deal. It is preferred, and desirable, that there be a single buyer for this entire 50%, and the current understanding is that if we are not able to tie up any good single investor, we will rather postpone the sale rather than going in for an IPO and selling the stake in bits and pieces to retail investors.

Thinking about it, I wonder if it is technically correct to call this a stake sale, since I don’t plan to take any dowry. Maybe if you take all costs into consideration, and not just the monetary ones, and if you assume payment to be a continuous thing rather than like a lumpsum (these investment bankers, they can arrange just about anything), it won’t be inaccurate to call this process a stake sale.

Usually, in these circumstances, most of the work is done by the bankers, but it seems that in this case that I, as the person divesting the stake, will need to put in considerable effort. The effort that I was too lazy to put when I was supposed to be trying to do the deal myself, without any asssistance from any bankers. Actually this is something that a lot of companies that indulge in M&A transactions forget about.

Think about your own incentives and the banker’s incentive. For the banker, this is just a deal. All they are caring for is to find a buyer for your sale, and a seller for anyone who wishes to buy stake. Once the deal is through and the cheques and documents signed, they ask you to sign on a set of fairly heavy cheques, and walk away; job done. It is you, as the company who is selling the stake, who has to deal with the new investor for maybe the rest of your life – transaction costs in these kind of deals are high, and it is preferable it be done exactly once.

One thing I realize is that the effort required here is of a different nature to the one that you need to put when in the market without bankers’ support. In the latter case, you need to engage in an elaborate ritual of tiki–taka, slowly moving towards the goal, and then unleashing a shot at the right moment. It is a well-respected and common algorithm, and any attempts to side-step it, and use short-cuts, usually end in disasters.

In the banked world, though, one thing is clear – you are sitting in that conference room together in order to strike a long-term deal, and not for a random networking meeting. All parties in the conference room are aware that the reason they are all sitting there, together, is so that they can work out a long-term deal. And thus, explicitly mentioning the deal, and explicitly working towards it, are not frowned upon – like it sometimes is in the outside market. You don’t need an y tiki-taka here. Tiki-taka is also seen as a waste of time. You better follow a direct approach and just put the ball in the box and then have a striker shoot it.

And remember that in such brokered deals, there is usually no goalkeeper.

PS: I need photos of myself for the offer document. I realize that I dont’ have too many of those. I’m not too narcissistic in my photography exploits, and I dont’ bother to collect pics that others have taken of me, and hence the shortage. Last night, my mother looked through my facebook pictures and pronounced each of them as “useless”. So, if you have good pictures of me, plis to be sending me. If you dont know my email ID, just leave a comment here and I’ll give you my email ID.

IPL Structuring

I remember that this time, last year, I was eagerly looking forward to the IPL auctions. It also happened to be a time when I was actively looking out for a new job (i wasn’t going to find one till about six months later). And I was secretly hoping that one of the IPL franchises would employ me as a game theory and structuring consultant in order to help them out with the player auctions. While I tracked it online, I imagined myself sitting in the bidding room at the Trident, showing my excel sheet to the franchise owner and captain, and watch Preity Zinta enhance her Mata Amrita Index.

It was also a period of extreme NED, due to which i didn’t bother looking out actively to try consult for an IPL franchise. It was a period of low confidence, so I assumed I wasn’t good enough for this kind of work, and didnt’ bother doing anything in this direction. Frankly, I didn’t have a clue how to proceed, else i might have put SOME effort at least. A few months later, when the IPL was well underway, I figured out that one of my cousins is a big shot with Bangalore Royal Challengers, and he was among the people at the Trident who picked the Test XI to represent BRC. I wanted to kick myself, but for some reason I didn’t.

Currently, I’m comfortably employed, and so far have been happy with this job. Else I might have wanted to throw my hat into the ring. Once again, IPL team formation season is on. A few transfers have gone through already, and a few are currently in limbo. Bidding will happen next season for people who are joining the league this year. It promises to be an interesting time. And so far I’ve been deeply unhappy with the way the franchises are going about their business.

I’m especially upset with BRC, and have half a mind to call up my cousin who consults for them and give him a piece of my mind. How the hell could they let go of Zaheer Khan in exchage for Robin Uthappa? Yes, the latter is from Bangalore, and has that local pull factor. He has batted quite well this Ranji, though not anywhere close to what he played like 2 seasons back when he topped the batting charts. But he is supposed to be paid twice of what Zaheer was being paid! Is he really worth that much? I’m sure that BRC missed a trick here. I’m sure that had the BRC asked for a fee from Mumbai Indians in order to release Zaheer in exchange for Uthappa, the Indians would’ve definitely paid up. When Chelski can reportedly offer Anelka, Malouda, Alex and 15 million pounds in exchange for Robinho, Mumbai could definitely part with Uthappa and maybe a million dollars in exchange for Zaheer.

There were rumours of the Mumbai Indians negotiating a swap with Kings XI Punjab for a swap between Powar and Harbhajan, which reportedly got stalled because Harbhajan earns so much more than Powar. Once again, what if the Mumbai Indians paid a fee along with Harbhajan for Powar? I know it is ridiculous that Powar is worth Harbhajan plus a fee, but given their disparity in income, this is the only way that this deal is possible. And I’m sure that there is a particular fee, which if paid along with Harbhajan in exchange for Powar, will leave all the interested parties (Punjab, Mumbai, Harbhajan, Powar) better off. It seems like people are too lazy to find it.

The opportunities like this are endless. All that the franchises need is someone who has sufficient knowledge of game theory, coase theorem, a decent knowledge of cricket (interest in domestic cricket is a desirable quality) and who understands how to structure deals. I don’t know if franchises have already recruited such people but if they haven’t, they should try and recruit. The most obvious choice of person that I can think of who possesses all the above skills (including interest in domestic cricket) is me. Unlike last year, I’m not in the job market right now, but don’t mind doing some part-time stuff. I may not get paid, but I’m willing to work for a few IPL tickets and maybe invites to some parties with cricketers.

I’m also wondering if cricketers’ pay will go down starting the 2011 season onwards. The IPL auctions happened just before the downturn was to begin, and I’m sure that franchises have overpaid for most players. Since players have all signed three year contracts, their pay till the 2010 season is safe. Beyond that, I’m not sure if franchises will offer them fresh contracts at higher or equal salaries.

It would also be interesting to see if some version of the Bosman ruling is to operate in the IPL. We can only wait and see.

When two heads collide

Yesterday, after watching Radoi and Rat headbutting each other, I messaged Baada saying that it’s too funny when people from the same team get involved in an accident, despite it being very painful for the players. A moment later, I realized that I had no right to laugh about these things after I got into major trouble following this accident with

amitng

And Baada was right – on an average, same-team collisions have resulted in more serious injury than different-team collision. Remember Waugh-Gillespie? Now i hear Radoi needs eye surgery and has a broken nose. And I remember a couple of such incidents in the English Premier League also, last season, where injuries were fairly serious (warranting substitution at least).

The Romanians have this peculiar character that looks like a T with a tail, and is pronounced as “ts” or “tz”. So Rat is pronounced as Ratz. The coach is Pitzurca. The Czech, instead of inventing a character for this sound, use the otherwise redundant C for these purposes. So it is Rositsky and Tsech.