There’s no need for City to be so prickly about records
FOR a club who are extraordinarily successful, Manchester City can be ever so needy at times. Take the row with Opta’s statisticians over what constitutes a win. It is fair to say City won’t leave many records unbroken by the time they are finished. Why the rush?
Opta insist Pep Guardiola achieved his 200th win after 273 games in charge against West Ham on Saturday. This is already the lowest number of games any manager has required to reach that total in the history of English football’s top division.
Opta congratulated Guardiola on his feat accordingly. City’s sniffy response was to say the milestone was actually reached earlier in the FA Cup against Swansea, but their numbers include three victorious penalty shootouts.
They also disputed Opta’s declaration that the Swansea game was a record- breaking 15th straight win for City. The club claim that record fell in the 2017-18 season, when between August 26 and December 3, City recorded 20 consecutive wins.
One problem. The 12th game in City’s list was a goalless draw with Wolves in the Carabao Cup that ended in a 4- 1 penalty shootout. Opta stopped counting, rightly, when the final whistle blew. City did not.
The club insist their stance is supported by ‘leading lawmakers and statisticians’.
Really? Who? Because in just about every football book on the shelves of just about any library, a game requiring a penalty shootout is a draw.
A win on penalties has never been, statistically, a win. The game, as we know it, is level and an artificial means of conclusion for logistical reasons is then implemented.
How this even ends up debated, heaven knows, but City felt strongly enough to enter talks on the process with Opta. Now plenty of fans are preparing to go into battle on City’s side.
What about the 1994 World Cup final. If that was a draw, how come Brazil got a trophy? And who is going to tell Sir Alex Ferguson that Manchester United only won a single Champions League final under his stewardship — with the 2008 victory on penalties over Chelsea being a draw?
This is a wilful misunderstanding of the way football works. There is an outcome, and there is a result. The outcome occurs out of necessity — the competition has to continue, one team have to receive the trophy.
The result is the score at the final whistle. The logistical appendage is entirely different. It is not a game of football. It is a
FIT, LIGHTLY RACED AND WORLD CLASS. BALE COULD BE HUGE FOR SPURS
means of deciding what happens next. And there are other ways.
So, did Italy win their 1968 European Championship semifinal with the Soviet Union? By Manchester City’s reckoning, they did. The game was played in Naples and ended 0-0. Yet the competition was very small back then, just four teams, with a tight schedule. There was no time for replays.
So Italy’s captain, Giacinto Facchetti, accompanied his opposite number down the tunnel to the dressing rooms, with two team administrators and the referee, Kurt Tschenscher, from Germany. A coin was produced and Facchetti called tails.
There were 70,000 people in the stadium above awaiting the outcome. Facchetti’s jubilant reappearance showed he had called correctly.
And that’s a win, yes? Italy won that match. Well, they must have done. They progressed. And progressing is winning, no matter the circumstances. Meaning Liverpool won their European Cup quarter-final against Cologne in 1964-65, too.
The teams had played home and away, both games ending goalless. A replay was arranged in Rotterdam, and that ended 2-2. Extra time couldn’t separate the teams, either, so it was decided the outcome would be settled by coin toss.
Ron Yeats, Liverpool’s captain, reached Belgian official Robert Schaut in the centre circle first. He said Liverpool wanted tails. Schaut obliged. The coin, tossed, then fell in a divot. It was tilted towards heads but Yeats smartly suggested a rerun.
‘And the referee said, “You’re right, Mr Yeats”,’ he recalled. ‘I thought Wolfgang Overath, their captain, was going to hit him. He was going berserk because it was falling over on heads. Then the referee sent it up again and it came down tails.’ So maybe that’s Liverpool’s victory, the little spot of gamesmanship that Yeats indulged in to send his team through — to be beaten by Inter Milan — or was the 300 minutes of actual football the game, and the rest just some jiggery-pokery that happens when a tournament, and a season, is running out of time. Inter went through to the semi-finals on March 3 — Liverpool 21 days later. Football is full of episodes like this which is why statisticians distinguish between the play and its artificial aftermath. In 1954, Spain and Turkey were in a twoteam qualifying group for the World Cup finals in Switzerland. Spain won 4-1 in Madrid, Turkey 1- 0 in Istanbul. Incredibly, aggregate results were not being used, leaving them tied on two points each.
A play-off in Rome ended 2-2. At which point, Luigi Franco Gemma, a 14- year- old boy whose father worked at the stadium — and who was blind, so considered an honest arbiter — was summoned and drew lots, sending Turkey through.
And that was a win? The one conjured in an instant by a 14- year- old blind kid, of a different nationality?
So why so prickly? Nobody is trying to take records from Manchester City.
Guardiola (left) got there, didn’t he? The winning streak is ongoing, yes? And how much better that it sits, undisputed, no asterisks required.
Why the desperation for now, now, now? Why the instant gratification?
A match is a match. A penalty shootout is a penalty shootout. And a record should be a fact that cannot be argued. If it’s done right.