Somewhere amid the controversy and the chaos, there is the germ of a paradox. Every philosophical quandary requires a scenario, and this is a good one: On Wednesday, the opening day of the men’s soccer tournament at the Paris Olympics, Cristian Medina scored a late — 106th-minute late — equalizer to help Argentina salvage a point against Morocco.
The goal prompted a barrage of objects to rain down on the field from the stands, followed by a smattering of fans. In the interests of safety, the referee called the players off the field. The game, however, had not ended; it had merely paused. An hour later, when the stadium had been cleared of the general public, play resumed. Javier Mascherano, Argentina’s coach, called it a “circus.”
The game continued with the news that Medina’s goal, which involved around a dozen blocks and saves and ricochets, had been rescinded by the video assistant referee. There had been an Argentine offside in the comic scramble beforehand. Morocco played out the final few minutes, the stadium now empty, and won, 2-1. Officially, that is how the game finished.
But to those watching — the fans in the stadium, who had experienced the goal but left before discovering that it did not count, and the fans following along at home, who might have switched off the game, assuming that it had ended — what was the score?
What had actually happened? Is it what they witnessed, what they saw with their own eyes, what they felt? Or is it what they were told, some time later, after some deus ex machina had intervened in human affairs? Every philosophical quandary needs a name, and this offers a good one, too: We can call it Mascherano’s Paradox.
The sensation, of course, will be familiar. The idea that truth is a slippery, malleable concept is something that most soccer fans internalized long ago. Managers had been using news conferences to reel off “alternative facts” — usually pertaining to the competence of various officials — years before the Trump aide Kellyanne Conway introduced the concept to a broader audience.
Fans understand, maybe even welcome, the sense that there is no fixed truth or falsehood when trying to keep track of the transfer market. Separating fact from fiction, a sort of instinctive Kremlinology that has the added benefit of being about defensive midfielders, is part of the fun.
Indeed, fandom itself is based essentially on the idea that truth is a personal, subjective concept: Your team is the best in the world; your team is morally correct; your team is the one that is the victim of some widespread and indistinct conspiracy; your team is the one that has ultimate agency over the outcome.
Only one element of the game was immune to this elasticity: the result. Of course, it was possible to quibble about whether a win or a loss was merited, to argue over its root causes, but the score itself was immutable. Everything that happened during the week was contestable, but Saturday and Sunday brought concrete reality.
In recent years, that firm ground has started to shift. The most immediate, most obvious cause of that has been the introduction — yes, sorry — of V.A.R. In January, the Belgian top flight decreed on appeal that a game between Anderlecht and Genk should be replayed after an incorrect application of the rules.
That case remains, at this stage, unique: No other game in a major European league has been replayed. The general direction of travel suggests it is unlikely to stay that way.
In October, the Liverpool manager Jürgen Klopp admitted that he felt his team’s game against Tottenham, in which a goal had been incorrectly ruled out after a V.A.R. check, should have been replayed, though Liverpool did not take his grievance any further. A few weeks later, another Belgian team, Club Brugge, did apply for one of its games to be replayed. Its case was dismissed by the same body that ruled in favor of Genk.
As recently as April, Barcelona’s president, Joan Laporta — nobody’s idea of a generous loser — demanded that La Liga consent to the idea that its showpiece game, the Clásico, be replayed after a shot from Lamine Yamal that appeared to have crossed the line was not ruled a goal. La Liga is the only major league in Europe that does not employ goal-line technology.
The issue here is of the authorities’ own making, of course: The introduction of an additional layer of refereeing, one that pretends to be able to find an objective truth even in matters that can, at times, be subjective, has overinflated expectations of accuracy. It was inevitable, though perhaps not foreseen, that when those expectations were not met, teams might contest the validity of any outcome deemed less than perfect.
But that is not the only development that has challenged the incontrovertibility of the result. It is hard to criticize soccer’s embrace of data. Its benefits, without question, outweigh its drawbacks: It has served to make both fans and those who work in the game smarter, more self-aware and, possibly most significant, more open.
Soccer was, for a long time, deeply resistant to outsiders. Data has helped to break down that self-imposed and self-limiting barrier: Players, clubs and leagues now employ countless people who have come to the game from academia, from science, from all manner of nontraditional, nonsporting backgrounds.
At the same time, though, it has — unintentionally and, it has to be stressed, without a hint of malice — helped to foster the idea that the score line is not the only authentic way of gauging a game’s outcome.
Soccer is now so awash in data that it is possible to cherry-pick it to prove almost anything: that the player who seemed to be little more than a passenger was, in fact, crucial to proceedings; that the team that was heavily beaten had, despite appearances, played extremely well; and, through expected goals, the metric that has seeped the furthest into the mainstream, that the final score did not, in many ways, reflect the truth of the game.
There is nothing wrong with this, of course. It is not doing any particular harm, not even when it is deployed by those sections of both the legacy media and its somewhat more raucous offspring, social media, solely in the interests of confecting controversy. Quite the opposite, in fact: Despite the miasma of hot takes and clickbait that fans must now wade through, they are, without question, better informed about the sport they love than at any point in the past.
An unintended consequence, though, is still a consequence. Data, as much as V.A.R., has helped to usher soccer conclusively into its postmodern age, where nothing — even the result of a game — is true, or at least not subjective to the point of being a single, overarching truth. Everything is up for debate. We are all, to some extent, adrift in Mascherano’s Paradox, told that what we saw with our own eyes, in the flesh or on a screen, was not actually what happened.
Limelight Hog
One of the most appealing aspects of the Olympics is that they offer a brief respite from the tyranny of the major leagues. Basketball, the N.F.L. and — in particular — elite soccer have quite deliberately transformed themselves into all-consuming, year-round enterprises, greedily inhaling all of the oxygen even when there are no games to be played.
The Olympics still just about offer the sports that are largely forced to labor in the shadows a chance to step into the spotlight; the Games provide a stage for swimmers and track and field athletes and badminton players to capture a nation’s hearts, to win not just medals but recognition for their dedication.
Soccer, though, does not cede that attention willingly. It is not one of the Olympics’ big-ticket events by any means — particularly now that the growth of the Women’s World Cup means that it is no longer the pinnacle for female players — but it does have a habit of making its presence felt.
In 2012, one of the early games in the women’s soccer competition was delayed when organizers mixed up the North Korean and South Korean flags: The North Korean players walked off the field in protest. Four years later, the men’s team from Nigeria took to the field under the strains of Niger’s national anthem.
If anything, soccer has outdone itself in Paris. On the same day that Argentina’s game with Morocco required four hours to reach a conclusion, an espionage scandal was enveloping Canada’s women’s team: An “unaccredited” analyst was caught flying a drone over a New Zealand training session.
Canada’s coach, Bev Priestman, handed herself a one-game ban, and two staff members were immediately sent home. Canada’s soccer authorities have apologized. (The team beat New Zealand, 2-1, on Thursday.) Soccer, once again, has made sure that it cannot be entirely ignored at the Olympics, even if it does not seem quite able to enter into the spirit of the Games.
Correspondence
I was surprised at the relative quiet in response to last week’s diversion into alternative history. Perhaps it was less a sign of a lack of interest and more one of widespread agreement with the conclusion that an empire covering all of South America and most of Europe would have a pretty good soccer team.
The suggestion that major finals should work, in effect, on a next-goal-wins basis was more controversial. “Almost every observer thinks there are too many games,” Bob Pfefferman pointed out. “A forever amount of overtime would introduce an unacceptable level of risk for the players.”
This is fair, though my instinct would be to say that more often than not, it would extend a player’s season by no more than half an hour. Still, thanks to Dan Goe for solving the issue: “The only practical way to make the idea of playing a final until someone scores is to combine it with an increased number of substitutes.” That should sort it out.
And speaking of extra games, Nicolas Shannahan’s mind has already turned to the Finalissima, the meeting of the champions of Europe and South America and the game I like to think of as the Store Brand World Cup final. (And I say that as a fan.)
“Is there any chance at all that the next installment — between Argentina and Spain — might be at the Nou Camp, allowing Lionel Messi a final send-off in Barcelona? Or is it a guarantee that this game will be taking place in Doha or Riyadh (or Arlington, Texas)?”
Well, Nicolas, I wouldn’t lose hope: The first edition of the Finalissima after its revival — between Argentina and Italy in 2022 — was at Wembley, so it’s not impossible that UEFA and Conmebol will decide to host it in Barcelona. The idea of Messi having a last farewell there is appealing and, therefore, potentially lucrative. The problem is that it would represent a home game for the Spanish. But if we added a second leg and did it on aggregate …
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