Eliminating Draws: Sepp Blatter's Latest (And Not So Greatest) Idea

In a recent interview with the German news magazine Focus, Sepp Blatter resurrected his by now well rehearsed idea to scrap draws at the World Cup and replace them with an immediate shoot out. Given that I spent a little time looking at draws during this past year's World Cup, I wondered what the esteemed Mr. Blatter was basing this proposal on. Call me a purist, but it's not clear to me that eliminating draws will produce better play or more exciting play. Anyone who watched New Zealand play their hearts out at this year's World Cup (becoming the only undefeated team in the tournament along the way) will know what I mean. And anyone who's ever played the game and managed to turn certain defeat into a draw knows the joy that draws can bring (and anyone who's managed to see a certain lead turn into a draw the agony of a draw).

The one thing we know is that matches that end in draws see fewer goals. I did a quick and dirty analysis of goals scored in the Big 4 league matches over the past five years, and the proportions are roughly 3 goals in matches that end in wins for one side and 2 in matches that end in draws.

But perhaps Sepp Blatter knows of another pattern in World Cup outcomes that had escaped me: perhaps the number of draws had increased so that FIFA officials are worried that spectators might lose interest in the matches (the latter being a remote possibility, given the amount of money FIFA has been able to make off the men's World Cup).

So, I cranked up the old World Cup dataset to see how common draws are at the World Cup and whether they have become more common. Here's the total number of draws at World Cups since 1930. And, aha, there it was: the number of draws has increased over time from 0 in 1930 to over 30 in 2010 (actually, to be precise, the number is exactly half that because I have counted draws by team, and every team that draws by definition draws another team). But perhaps, this is what President Blatter noticed.

Well, I hope that's not what it is. The problem with this count is, of course, that it disregards the tournament format, especially the number of teams, and changes in first and second round play (and the possibility of draws) that have occurred over the years.
One simple way to see this is to look at the number of wins at World Cups: lo and behold, they have gone up, too, over the years (hopefully) to noone's surprise.

So what we really need is to account for how many teams are playing (and therefore how many matches are played under identical formats). One simple way to do that is to compare identical tournament formats, so here are the numbers of draws for each World Cup since 1998 (again double counting).

Turns out, the number of draws has not gone up. Instead, it's been quite steady at around 30 per team and tournament (or about 15 when we're looking at matches). For this tournament format, that's about 1 in 4 matches for the tournament as a whole (or a ratio of .25). But what's even more stunning is the fact that this is almost identical to the proportion of draws for the entire history of the World Cup since 1930, which stands at .22.

Of course, you may say, this disregards the fact that, under the current tournament format, some of these draws are second round draws that were turned into wins and losses after overtime and possibly a penalty shootout. Fair enough, so let's look only at "true" draws. This gets us back to the fact that things really haven't changed very much, as the following graph reveals (it shows the proportion of all first round draws (real draws, so to speak) in World Cups since 1998.)

Yes, there was an increase in 2010 over 2006, but to me, this pretty much looks like the long-run average with some tournament-to-tournament changes.

So, why did Blatter bring up this old idea? Beats me, but I bet it's a useful diversion, and I suspect it's purely for public consumption to divert attention from the much more controversial (and objectionable, in his mind) discussion over using technology to assist referees. After some of the disastrous refereeing decisions at this year's World Cup, at least the discussion is now on the agenda for the October International Football Association Board (IFAB) meeting.

This suggests that Blatter cannot escape the debate, for now. But does that mean we will have a real and serious debate over technology in football, based on evidence? Count me among the doubters.

For a slightly snarky list of Sepp Blatter's ideas for reforming football, click here.