Copa America

Brrrrriiiingg. My brother and I promptly jumped out of bed with excitement. it was going to be the first time we had ever attended a major sporting event. A Copa America final between Argentina and Chile being played only a few miles away from our aunt’s house. An opportunity to see the best player in the world play for our favorite team. After a few moments of looking in the mirror and realizing that the day had finally come, we quickly got dressed and headed to the bus stop across the street. After anxiously waiting, we got on the bus. When we arrived, it felt surreal. The stadium itself was massive, and since we had never been to a stadium larger than the U of I’s football stadium, it was a humbling fixture to stand in front of. The surrounding parking area was chock-full of supporters blasting music and cooking food and the air was filled with excitement and anticipation. In the blink of an eye, the gates opened and people started flooding into the stadium, and soon enough, the game had begun. I’ll cut to the chase: Argentina lost on penalties after a 120-minute game (the game went into extra time).

What the game revealed to me is that professional soccer is a much dirtier game than I thought it to be. In order to explain why this was the case, let me set the stage. At the Copa America final, Argentina was undoubtedly the favorites to win. Up front, they had the best player in the world (Messi) along with the likes of Aguero and Higuain (each the most prolific attackers for their respective teams). Their midfield and defense were much weaker but still had world class players. Chile had a less talented team, but one that worked well as a unit and had scored 9 while conceding 0 goals in their previous two games. Furthermore, Argentina had already beaten Chile earlier in the tournament. Thus, Chile’s game plan (which was evident very early in the game) was to defend and try to make it to penalties. Unsurprisingly, this made for a less exciting game, since Chile spent a lot of time passing it around the back and had at least 2 players standing next to Messi at all times.

What especially stood out to me emerged later in the game. Firstly, there were fake injuries. As the game approached its end, many Chilean players began pretending to be injured as a way of stopping the game and slowing down the opposing team’s momentum. Multiple times during the game, when Argentina was about to counter-attack, a Chilean player would take a seat on the pitch and motion to the medics. The play would stop, and the Argentinian fans would chant some harsh words about the “injured” player’s mother. Then the player would motion at a muscle, the medics would give him a nice massage and a drink of water, and after realizing that absolutely nothing was wrong with the player, they would scamper off the field. Through this process, 1 minutes of play would be lost, and even worse, Argentina’s goal scoring opportunity will have disappeared. This repeated probably 8-10 times during the game. From a statistical point of view, it is quite perplexing that 10 players from the team that wants to end the game 0-0 would come up with a mysterious life-threatening leg cramp, while no one on Argentina’s team had any time-stopping health issues. And the referee obviously knew that 9 times out of 10 the Chilean players were faking their injuries, or at least giving into their pains more than they would if they had been playing for the other side. But the referee really couldn’t do anything about it, since it was not up to his discretion which injuries to take seriously. Therefore, the game was slower and probably lower scoring than it could have been if the Chileans had decided to stand for the entire game.

Another irking trend that appeared towards the end of the game was fouling. If you don’t already know, in soccer, you only get ejected from the field if you get a red card or two yellow cards. Getting ejected results in some amount of games banned (in the tournament in which the ejection occurred) and too many yellow cards over time can also lead to a match ban. But since they were playing in the dying minutes of a tournament final, there was no huge risk associated with fouling. An ejection wasn’t the end of the world since you would only be out of the game for the few remaining minutes, and the ban associated with the ejection would only mean that you wouldn’t be able to play in some early (and less important) game on the next iteration of the tournament. Similarly, a yellow card was a minor issue. Thus, the Chileans freely hacked at the Argentinian player’s legs or pulled at their shirt in order to stop them from a potentially scoring a goal; the risk of being booked was worth the reward of not conceding a goal. This, added to random “injuries” really slowed down the game and made it about winning with any means possible (something that I would argue defeats the purpose of a sporting event.)

In the end, I wouldn’t say that going to the game was in any way negative because of the way it was played. Of course, we didn’t get to see Argentina win, but the atmosphere and the experience as a whole were incredible. And, after all, we saw a significantly longer game than what we were promised.