Football Manager and science
Average Rating: 10/10 Hits: 326 Submitted: Feb 23, 2008
One of things that I like the most in FM is studying my opponents before a big match. Not only that it brings me enormous amount of information that gives me a sense of pride every time me and my friends watch football and I narratively tell the players names as if it’s the last time we’re tested on, but it actually helps understanding the game, and yes, I mean football and not the thing you call ‘manager’.
Recently I’ve read an article about statistics and probability. Don’t worry, I won’t confuse you with too many numbers and formulas - that article was in fact and to my surprise, about football, but not ours but the American football. The article was about the statistics capability of gamblers, agents, coaches and just obsessive fans (anyone?) to anticipate a progress of a player by his running average, and all the other nonsense American football deals with (maybe they meant Baseball and I got confused? who knows?). The point is, that football, and Football Manager in particular is actually about statistics. Statistics come from the word static - inactive, the opposite of dynamic, changing.
“In every rule there is an exception”, that’s what a friend of mine told me in a school bus few years ago. It was a respond to a short ‘No’ after I was asked if I like Soda and R.E.M - because apparently there is unwritten rule about people that like Soda and R.E.M, they’re homosexual. Smart, that friend.
You have just eaten a green apple and discovered, much to your disappointments, that it’s sour. You ate another one, and again - sour. The third one is there, and even before you bite it your body crumbles with face that wouldn’t embarrass a poisoned Ukrainian politician. Your brain says - “Hey! Are you stupid? Are you Cinderella? Green apple is sour!”.
Hold on a second, the third apple was actually suit and refreshing, so what just happened here?
This is where Football Manager falls - it allows us a statistical approach to a dynamical game, to a game that based on tactics far beyond the tactical mentality of players and numerical attributes. Statistics always have anomalies, lack of harmony between what it anticipated to reality - that’s why we fix it to fit this new reality, but what’s the scientific point of that?
“In every rule there is an exception”, that’s what a friend of mine told me in a school bus few years ago. It was a respond to a short ‘No’ after I was asked if I like Soda and R.E.M - because apparently there is unwritten rule about people that like Soda and R.E.M, they’re homosexual. Smart, that friend.
You have just eaten a green apple and discovered, much to your disappointments, that it’s sour. You ate another one, and again - sour. The third one is there, and even before you bite it your body crumbles with face that wouldn’t embarrass a poisoned Ukrainian politician. Your brain says - “Hey! Are you stupid? Are you Cinderella? Green apple is sour!”.
Hold on a second, the third apple was actually suit and refreshing, so what just happened here?
This is where Football Manager falls - it allows us a statistical approach to a dynamical game, to a game that based on tactics far beyond the tactical mentality of players and numerical attributes. Statistics always have anomalies, lack of harmony between what it anticipated to reality - that’s why we fix it to fit this new reality, but what’s the scientific point of that?
