Don't put too much emphasis on the score

The US Men recently won two World Cup qualifying matches in a span of 5 days, and are sitting on top of the group with only 2 matches left to play. While fans of the US were ecstatic to get 6 points in two games (3 of them on the road), many were also distressed to see less-than-dominant performances against the two worst teams in the Hexagonal. Everyone has their opinions about who played well or poorly and what the US did and did not do right, but in a sport like soccer which does not lend itself to the production and distribution of reliable game-by-game statistics, it is difficult for anyone to actually prove a point. Did this US really play that poorly? Does Bob Bradley really deserve to get fired?

Given the lack of hard evidence that the US played poorly over the last two games, many fans are tempted to look at the scoreboard and conclude that the Yanks must have done alright. For example, a couple of representative quotations from the online forums at ussoccer.com:

" I like to think we're doing something right at least being top of our group, and have come away with 6 points in the last 2 matches."

"The last time I checked a win is a win. It is almost like american fans expect perfection. We won and should be happy."

This is a common trap for soccer fans, and it is also a way of thinking from which we have to get away if we want to actually be able to tell how are team is likely to fare in future games, rather than how they fared in games that have already been played. This is especially true if even US coaches and players start to believe that they are playing well just because they are winning.

THe reason is that in soccer, more than almost any other sport, the score is a remarkably poor indicator of how two teams fared over 90 minutes. Games like baseball, football and basketball produce a wealth of statistics that are ready for analysis before a game is even concluded. If I think a basketball team won despite not playing well, I can look at statistics like shooting percentage, rebounds (offensive and defensive) and turnovers. A baseball team can win despite getting fewer hits than an opponent by bunching those hits together, and we as fans can read a box score and see that this happened. We have no such luxury in soccer.

How can we objectively measure how two teams played? Shots on goal is not as good an indicator of success at the quality of those chances, but quality is quite a subjective judgment. Time of possession tells part of the story, but is difficult to measure as it is sometimes difficult to tell which team, if any, has possession of the ball (for the same reason, it would be difficult though useful to count turnovers). It is also important where on the field this possession occurs, and if one team has a few more minutes of possession at the end of the game because they take a few more seconds on each throw-in or goal kick.

After any game, there are several "what-if" scenarios. What if he had caught that pass, or what if that three pointer had gone in? Those events could have changed the game. However, in games in which many shots are made and teams score multiple times, those events are less important in determining the final outcome of a game. Not so in soccer. If a team wins 1-0 and their opponent had a shot that hit the cross bar, that team was an inch or a gust of wind away from a 1-1 tie. Can we honestly argue that the fact that they won 1-0 is a good indicator of how they played? No, we can't, and we as fans and commentators should look for other ways to evaluate how teams have played, so we can better tell how they are likely to play in the future, and what changes they could stand to make.

Back to the US' last two matches. Our guys outplayed El Salvador, but not by as much as we would have liked. El Salvador's only goal was practically an own goal by Bornstein, and the US had a goal called back on a bogus offsides call. The game "should have" been 3-1.

But what if Dempsey's goal had been called offsides? He was on, of course, but most line men would have mistakenly put up their flags in that situation. The US still would have been down 1-0 when Altidore headed the ball into the back of the net in extra time. But what if the referee had blown his whistle after 46 minutes instead of 47? Most refs don't give much time at the end of the first half, and the US was probably lucky to get a full two minutes. The Yankes could have easily gone into halftime down 0-1.

All this isn't to suggest that the US was lucky to beat El Salvador or that we didn't deserve to win. Our guys outplayed theirs, and the best team won. The point is that the score doesn't tell us that. Because the US could have easily outplayed El Salvador and lost 0-1 or tied 1-1. And no one would be pointing at the scoreboard and saying "we won, so we must have done something right".

In T & T, the US was outplayed in the second half. Great work in goal by Tim Howard and a shot off the crossbar are the only reasons the US didn't go into half time down by at least a goal. In the second half our guys played better, but they weren't dominant, and the only goal came on a long range strike which, while an excellent shot, could have been stopped (by Tim Howard, for example). Once again, the US could have easily tied or lost. And while the US once again probably deserved to win, the point is that if they had lost that game, they still would have deserved to win, but wouldn't have.

Very little would have had to happen differently for the US to get 0, 1 or 2 points out of those last two games. That is a cause for concern, and saying "well we won so we must be playing ok" doesn't set my mind at ease. The lesson is that in soccer as opposed to other sports, the final score is a remarkably bad indicator of how a match actually went. And especially in 1-0 games, we might as well throw the score out the window when talking about what the boys did right or wrong.