Attack and defence: Difference between revisions

{{a|devil|}}You may note with horror the subject of this post seems to be ''football''. It isn’t really — the JC’s basic disinterest in/ignorance of the beautiful game is widely known and mocked —but it does use football as an analogy. To the sportsphobics: apologies: hopefully you’ll think it worth it.  

It is amazing what you remember.

It struck the JC while watching the 2022 World Cup Final that there is a large asymmetry between how we evaluate ''attack'' and ''defence''. The final will be remembered for Lionel Messi, yes, but also for Kilian Mbappé’s hat-trick — the first in a World Cup final since you-know-when.

It is interesting to compare ''coverage'' of Mbappé’s performance — ''breathless'' — with that of Argentine defender Nicolás Otamendi’s — ''qualified''.  

The common consensus: Otamendi had a solid game, but made one big mistake, giving away the penalty that brought France back into the game. Mbappé, on the other hand was more or less invisible for 80 minutes, but sparked to life ten minutes from the end, scoring a hat-trick to take the match to penalties which, despite another Mbappé penalty, France then lost.

Yet Otamendi’s sports journalist-assigned ratings averaged about 5/10; Mbappé’s about 9.5. That two of Mbappé’s three goals were penalties — in top-flight professional football the taker scores about 85% of all penalties, so you’d expect a taker to score two 72% of the time, and three 61% of the time: Mbappé was odds on to score those penaties. <ref>https://sqaf.club/what-percentage-of-penalties-are-scored-stats/</ref> — did not dim the papers’ appreciation, and has already dropped out of Wikipiedia’s executive summary. The fact that the Argentine defence so dominated France that half of its forward line was replaced before half-time — nor that Argentina eventually won — seems not to have helped Otamendi.

Interesting note: despite the widespread use of “Enhanced Football Intelligence” — every player in the tournament was GPS tracked and data exists for number, location and success rate of passes, tackles and touch rates — not one of the media ratings made reference to it.

If you aren’t on the park, you can’t stick the ball in the net — but you can still get booked, as the hapless Giroud found out later.

The ten top-paid ''defenders'' in the world earn between £12m and £18m a year.<ref>https://www.johnfyucha.com/2021/12/highest-paid-defenders.html</ref> The top paid footballers earn between £20m and £35m, and most are strikers.<ref>https://www.johnfyucha.com/2022/10/top-10-highest-paid-footballers-in-2022.html</ref> Not one is a defender.

The point here is not to challenge these ratings but note the different success criteria for attackers compared to defenders. The ''payoffs'' are asymmetrical: A defender must put in a 90 minutes shift. A striker can piss about for half the game as long as she is canny enough to get on the end of at least one cross before the final whistle she will still be remembered as a hero.  

 

It seems like there should be an arbitrage here: one should pay ''more'' for quality defending — it’s cheaper, and definitely better value for money than a fancy-Dan striker who doesn’t do much for most of the game.

Yes; this is an anecdote; but it a representative one. It translates to other scenarios with an “attack” and “defence” component. Like financial services. But here the payoff is asymmetrical the ''other'' way: If the business of banking is picking up pennies in front of a steamroller. Then “attack” is the actually unglamorous business of picking up pennies; “defence” is the risk management job of making sure you are not hit by a steamroller.  

If you are Kilian Mbappé one well-timed volley can bring you immortality, this is almost never going to happen to a salesguy. ''Unless he blows up''. You would most likely not have heard of Nick Leeson, John Meriwether, Jeff Skilling, [[Bernie Madoff]], [[Archegos|Bill Huang]] or Gabe Plotkin ''had they not blown up''. Credit Suisse made USD$20m per year from [[Archegos]]; they lost $US$5.5bn on it ''overnight''.

Post script: spare a thought for poor old Olivier Giroud, substituted off after 40 minutes.<ref>“Seethed after humiliating early substitution but in truth the game had completely passed him by. 5” said the Guardian. “Slightly lucky at one point not to give away a penalty and so ineffective up front he did not make it to half-time. 5” opined the Express. “A miserable final for the former Arsenal man as he was subbed before half-time,” said the Express, before awarding the poor chap 3. ''L’Équipe'' was so outraged that it refused to rate him at all.</ref>