LUCK?, dON T mAKE ME LAUGH

DAN HOLMES says that all the talk about luck in football is a red herring that deflects away from deficiencies and makes us feel better when we lose...

IN ANY game of football anywhere in the world there are a certain amount of guarantees. You can be sure, for instance, that at some point in the match a chance will be missed and a commentator will declare that the offending player will be ‘disappointed with that’.

Something else of which to be certain is that every corner will be greeted with cries of ‘away!’ from fans of the defending team.

There is, however, one thing, one concept which will inevitably be the focus of blame for incidents which went against the fortunes of any given team. That thing is luck.

A ‘lucky goal’; that ‘little bit of luck’ being missing in the final third; not getting ‘any luck’ with decisions and so on.We’ve all heard them – we hear them every week – so what is it that so compels people within the game to offer up luck as a mitigating factor?

Let us now look at some high-profile ways in which the concept of luck has been used to detract from the validity of certain occurrences.

Frank Lampard has been, without doubt, one of the finest midfielders the Premier League has ever seen, both in terms of accomplishments, statistics and longevity.

Yet during his most productive scoring spells it was commonplace to hear his deflected goals written off as ‘jammy’.

Any such assertion totally dismisses both logic and reasoning. In what way can a deflected goal be lucky?

The very definition of luck is something which is brought about by chance rather than actions, so it simply does not follow that a deflected goal could be in any way fortunate. The ‘action’ in this case was the initial shot on goal.Without this, there can be no deflection and therefore no goal.

From the career of a Premier League legend to the circumstances surrounding the rise to prominence of arguably the greatest club side ever to play the game.

Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona conjured up the closest thing to footballing perfection ever seen in the modern game, at least from a purists’ point of view.

Yet this, apparently, also owed everything to luck. It was lucky that the club had such masterful players plying their trade simultaneously. Guardiola was lucky to have what many felt was the best player ever to have graced a football field – Lionel Messi – to call upon.

The notion dictated that ‘anybody’ could manage the Catalonians at that time. Once more, logic was trampled into the dirt.

The emergence of majestic talents such as Xavi, Andres Iniesta and Messi was a direct result of a philosophy based upon nurturing and facilitating the development of young players from youth team to first team. Messi’s ascendancy to the status of world’s premier talent had been thanks in part to Guardiola’s boldness in selling previous superstar Ronaldinho in order to grant the Argentinian centre-stage. Upon such judgements are greats defined. No luck involved.

Perhaps the main reason we cite luck in mitigation is a desire, conscious or subconscious, to alleviate the pain of adversity.

After all, much better to have been unlucky than outclassed, right? Preferable to have been unlucky with decisions than to have lost due to profligacy in front of goal.

This, however, is an extremely misleading way of thinking. It diverts attention away from shortcomings and fosters attitudes amongst management, players and fan-bases that they are somehow being persecuted by fate.

In the results-based world of football, where every fine and minor detail is analysed meticulously in search of marginal gains, excusing failure due to luck cannot be taken seriously.

Truth be told, luck plays almost no part in football. Anything that occurs on the field of play must be accepted within the context of the game. Every match will have twists and turns and there will always be controversy, but that is simply the by-product of a series of very deliberate actions – namely, two teams trying to win a football match.