The World Cup group stages is an engineer’s delight. After each game, you can pull out your graphing calculator, whip up an excel spreadsheet, and coherently articulate the goals/points/wins necessary for the teams to advance. However, not all of us who follow the game revel in the hegemony of mathematical summation. Despite a very clear system of categorization imposed upon the beautiful game, the human element lends itself to fanciful speculation. And who doesn’t love fanciful speculation?
Uruguay was the consummate partypooper, dashing the host nation’s dreams of advancing. Meanwhile, Mexico played the part of giant killer – putting France to the sword with an impressive 2-0 victory. Granted, at that time nobody realized the full scope of France’s innate problem: consisting of French players. However, after a few news leaks, it dawned on the world that France, composed of French players, inevitably would implode from within. And it did.
But those two victories merely set the table for a prisoner’s dilemma only available in the world of sport. Argentina awaits the team that advances in second place. In 2006, Argentina eliminated Mexico from the World Cup. Last year, Argentina beat Uruguay in Montevideo. Thus, the team that wins avoids this huge risk.
However, the team that loses, in addition to the risk of the albiceleste, also could be eliminated if France or South Africa beat the other by a lot of goals, the sixth leap year has only 366 days, and enough salt is tossed over the shoulder to feed a starving army. So, in the economic sense, how far do Mexico and Uruguay aspire? If they are content to advance, then expect a drab zero-zero draw.
While this may bore the spectator, from a conspiracy theorist perspective, this could be a blessing in disguise. This could be a moment of infamy, like Argentina’s 6-0 drubbing of Peru or the infamous 1-0 West Germany “victory.” After Argentina beat Peru to advance at the expense of Brazil, FIFA changed the timing of the last group games to coincide to cease such antics.
But what could FIFA due in this case? In our era of Fair Play where teams stop play for a fallen comrade or enemy, is the deliberate draw the epitome of juego sucio? And, realistically, what could be done to prevent it? A Sepp Blatter pep talk at halftime to each side? A special Pizza Hut promotion where the winner gets free food for a week?
Nevertheless, any cries of foul play will fall on deaf ears when compared with the other reality. The first round group games are similarly tense affairs where teams of comparable quality willingly play out drab draws. In that sense, the Uruguay-Mexico match may be so painfully akin to what we saw two weeks ago, that the redundancy of it may bore us to sleep. Or watch golf.
I reckon Uruguay and Mexico engineered the 1-0, just to screw with France by tempting them into believing they had a chance of qualification. Of course, they reckoned without the ability of France to screw with themselves.
Fredo,
You were right about the Mexico-Uruguay result, but strongly overestimated the ability of France to mount even a semblance of a half spirited performance. At least they are not weighed down by the weight of that last shred of dignity…..
Technically, NOT a Prisoner’s Dilemma, but I take your point.
(
Regarding PD:-
Axelrod, Robert, 1984, The Evolution of Cooperation, Basic Books, 241 pages, ISBN 0-465-02122-0
Poundstone, William, 1992, Prisoner’ Dilemma: Anchor Books, Doubleday, 294 pages, ISBN 0-385-41580-X
)
Miso,
It is true that there is no direct communication dilemma between the two sides: presumably, they could say “hey, let’s just tie.”
However, the information about the other game is not readily available to them, thus this absence forces what could be an amicable encounter into an adversarial confrontation. Or something.