African Nations Cup Qualifying

Some readers of First Round Bye might protest that the subject of sports systems and structures is trivial. "Just play the games, and don't worry about tie breakers and wild cards," you might think.

Tell that to the South African soccer team.

With one game to go in qualifying for the 2012 African Nations Cup last weekend, the standings for Group G looked like this (3 points for a win, 1 for a draw):

Team	W/L/D	pts.	goal diff.
Niger	3-2-0	9	+1
South Africa	2-1-2	8	+2
Sierra Leone	2-1-2	8	0
Egypt	0-3-2	2	-3

In the final games, played simultaneously, Egypt hosted Niger and South Africa hosted Sierra Leone.
Word soon filtered back to South Africa that Egypt was beating Niger handily (they went on to win, 3-0). So here's your quiz question: what does South Africa need to do to win the group and advance to the Cup finals?

Well, beating Sierra Leone is clearly enough. That would give South Africa 11 points to Niger's 9 and Sierra Leone's 8. What about a draw? That would leave Niger, South Africa and Sierra Leone with 9 points, so I guess we better check what the tie breaker rules are.

But South Africa didn't check.

The team's coach, Pitso Mosimane, just assumed that goal difference would break ties. If so, a draw with Sierra Leone would leave the three teams' goal differences at South Africa +2, Sierra Leone 0 and Niger, thanks to its 3-0 loss, at -2. Mosimane ordered his players to play defensively and protect a 0-0 draw. He even pulled out a striker for a midfielder. When the game did end 0-0, the team celebrated their "qualification."

Mosimane was wrong. The tie breaker was not goal difference, but head to head record among the tied teams. Niger was 2-2 against South Africa and Sierra Leone, for 6 points, while the other two teams were 1-1-2, for 5 points. Niger won the group and will advance to the Nations Cup.

Whether goal difference or head-to-head is a better way to break ties in a four-team group is a question for another day. But there is clearly not one set method. The World Cup uses goal difference; the Champions League uses head-to-head. You need to know the rules before you play the games.

And how did the South African federation react to their debacle? With embarrassment, shame and regret? Nope. They are appealing to get a spot in the finals. "We think we have a case," South Africa's football chief executive said.

Actually, you don't have a case. But as a consolation prize, we award you a one year's subscription to First Round Bye. Please read it.

Australian Playoff Systems

It's time for the Aussie Rules football playoffs, giving us a chance to examine Australian playoff systems, which have several unusual elements.

There are 17 teams in the Australian Football League, and the top 8 make the playoffs. In a typical North American playoff system, that would lead to the quarterfinal matchups 1-8, 4-5, 2-7, and 3-6. For Aussie rules, though, the matchups are 1-4 and 2-3, known as the qualifying finals, and 5-8 and 6-7, known as the elimination finals.

After the first round, the qualifying finals winners get a week off. The losers drop down to face the winners of the elimination finals in what are called the semifinals. (The losers of the eliminations finals, as the name implies, are eliminated.)

The two "semifinal" winners now move on to face the qualifying finals winners in the "preliminary finals," which is what the rest of us call a semifinal. The two winners face off in the grand final to determine the champion.

(That oddly named "semifinal" is confusing, but in Australian sports there are a number of things with slightly odd names to get used to. The standings or table is referred to as a "ladder," for example.)

Rugby World Cup

The structure of the upcoming Rugby World Cup shares some of the flaws of the Cricket World Cup, which we discussed some months ago.

Twenty teams are entered, divided into four groups of five. The top two from each group advance to the quarterfinals.

Let's look at the five groups. In case you don't know the relative strengths of the various teams, FRB has included the bookmakers' odds to win the Cup (omitting them for teams who are 1000-1 or more):

New Zealand 3-5, France 20, Japan, Tonga, Canada
England 15, Argentina 250, Scotland 350, Georgia, Romania
Australia 4, Ireland 40, Italy, USA, Russia
South Africa 10,  Wales 100, Samoa 350, Fiji 800, Namibia

There will be 40 matches in the preliminary round. Study the groups and odds, and pick out the most intriguing storylines. Here's FRB's list:

1. Will Argentina or Scotland get the second qualifying spot in Group B behind England?
2. Can Samoa, or perhaps Fiji, upend Wales for a quarterfinal spot?

Ummm. That's it.

Nearly a month of rugby will be determining almost nothing. New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, England, and France are gold-plated locks to make the quarterfinals. Ireland and Wales are also very, very likely to do so. But gee, that Scotland-Argentina game should be great.

FRB understands that one of the goals of the World Cup is to promote rugby in places where it is not enormously  popular. But having 20 teams in this event is absurd. And having knockout quarterfinals when there are only 6 or 8 really good teams is a mistake too.

FRB proposes this format:

Split Brackets in the Gold Cup and Copa

Consider the 2011 Concacaf Gold Cup and Copa America, both just completed.

Each had 12 teams, broken into three preliminary groups of four. The top two from each group advanced. As the groups are called A, B and C, let's call these six teams A1, A2, B1, B2, C1 and C2. The top two third place teams also advanced; let's call these T1 and T2.

Now how should the quarterfinals be structured? Well, a logical breakdown could be:

A1 v T1
B1 v C2
------
C1 v T2
A2 v B2

The key factor here is separation. The two weakest teams, the third places, are put in different halves. The first-place teams are kept apart as long as possible. And teams that met in the group stage are also kept apart when possible.

Now let's take a look at how the tournaments were actually drawm, Gold Cup on the left, Copa on the right:

Gold Cup           Copa
A1 v T1             A1 v T1
A2 v B2             A2 v C2
------
B1 v C2             B1 v T2
C1 v T2             C1 v B2

At first glance, these look pretty reasonable. But each of them violates one rule. Teams that met in the group stages are not kept apart as long as possible. Note how A1 and A2 can have a rematch in the semifinals, as can C1 and C2 in the Gold Cup and B1 and B2 in the Copa.

World Football Challenge

The World Football Challenge, a series of exhibition games in North America involving top European and Mexican soccer teams, is under way. An overall winner will be chosen, in a rather unusual system.

Though there are nine teams involved, each plays only three games. Thus it is quite possible for an undefeated team to lose the title. Indeed, at this writing, both Real Madrid and Manchester City have finished their games with 3-0 records.

So how to separate the teams? Each game ends after 90 minutes, and if tied, there is an immediate shootout. Wins in regulation are worth 3 points, shootout wins are 2 points, shootout losses 1 point and regulation losses 0 points. Not only that, but there is a bonus point for each goal scored in regulation, win or lose, up to a maximum of three per game.

A couple of the teams are unusual too. Besides five European clubs and two Mexican sides, there are some hybrid "teams": MLS East and MLS West. Each is not really a team per se but rather the total points earned by several Major League Soccer teams. MLS East's point total is based on single games played by three different teams: New England, Chicago and Philadelphia. The MLS West side consists of Los Angeles (2 games) and Vancouver (1 game).
Alert readers will have noticed that 9 teams times 3 games each is 27, an odd number. To solve this, Sporting Lisbon played in just one game  as a non-competitor. Still, the game it played did count for its opponent, Juventus.

At this writing, Real Madrid has a formidable point total of 17 out of a possible 18. Manchester United has 12 with a game to play, so still could get a perfect 18.
Barcelona  hasn't played any of its three games yet.  In order to match or surpass its rival Real, it will have to win three times, scoring a lot of goals. But then few teams in the world are more capable of doing so.

Chilean Cup

What is it with South American cup competitions? FRB has written about their odd structures on a couple of occasions. Let's add Chile to the list.

In 2010, the Copa Chile was a standard knockout tournament. But for 2011, quite a strange system has been put in place.

The first few rounds, involving lower division teams, are ordinary two-legged playoffs. Eventually, 18 lower-division sides advance to a group stage, where they are joined by the 18 teams from the top division.

So, 36 is a nice even number for a competition. There are lots of fairly straightforward ways of  winnowing a field of 36 teams down to one champion. This is not one of them.

Relegation in Argentine Football

Relegation in soccer is simple, right? At the end of the season, the three, or two, or four, lowest placed teams drop down a division, to be replaced by teams from below. But not in Argentina.
One of the dangers, and thrills, of relegation is that a big-name team that has a bad year can find itself sent down. In Argentina, and several other countries like Colombia and Mexico, where the biggest clubs are especially well-connected and influential, organizers want to avoid this. So they determine relegation based on performance over multiple years.

Let's take a look at how it works in Argentina. As in many Western Hemisphere countries, the league year is divided into two parts. The first championship, the Apertura, ran from August 2010 to February 2011. The 20 teams played each other once each, with Estudiantes winning the title with 45 points. The second championship, the Clausura, with an identical format, ran February to June; Velez Sarsfeld won with 39 points.
Estudiantes and Velez are both considered champions; Velez had more combined points in the two championships by a large margin, but there is no "overall winner" crowned, though the full-season table does  determine qualifiers for the continental Copa Sudamericana.

To determine the relegated teams, points over the last three years (six semiannual compeititions) are considered. Velez scored 66, 61, and 82 points in the last three years, for a total of 209, putting them top in this table.
But it is the bottom of the table that matters. Take the team First Round Bye supports in Argentina, Huracan. It had a pretty good year in 2008-09, with a total of 58 points. But it earned just 37 in 09-10, and a league-low 30 this past season. The total was just 125, far behind Velez.

U.S. Open Cup Qualifying

This week, the U.S. Open Cup announced its first and second round pairings. Not every American team qualifies for the Cup, and each league uses its own system to determine who gets in.
(For more on the various leagues, here's FRB's analysis of the American soccer pyramid from earlier in the year.)

The top league, M.L.S., has 16 American clubs, and six qualify automatically based on their league finish last season. The other 10 are drawn into two five-team knockout tournaments (with six teams getting byes), and the winner of each advances to the Cup; this year it was Chicago and Kansas City. As in all rounds of the Cup, the home teams were drawn randomly.

The second level of the pyramid is the new N.A.S.L., which has only five American teams; it ended up not entering the Cup this year after failing to get organized quickly enough.

Next up is USL Pro, with 11 American teams. They have the easiest route to the tournament; they all get in!

Draft Lotteries

The major professional sports leagues in North America all hold annual drafts in which teams take turns selecting young players. The key element of all the drafts is that the worst teams get to choose first. The worse your record, the earlier you get to make your selection. In theory, this is supposed to make the bad teams better over time and increase competitive balance.

Of course, a draft also provides a perverse incentive to lose games. If your team is having a bad year anyway, why not lose a bunch of games so as to move up in the draft? Maybe even aim to have the worst record in the league to get the coveted No. 1 spot and a potential superstar player.

The National Basketball Association was the first league to deal with this, in 1966, by holding a coin toss to determine if the top pick would go to the worst Eastern or worst Western team. This way, blowing the season and finishing last only guaranteed a 50% chance at the top pick, rather than a 100% chance.

The modern draft lottery came into being after suspicions that the Houston Rockets -- and perhaps other teams -- intentionally lost games in 1984 in order to get into the coin toss. The Rockets won the toss, and drafted the star center Akeem Olajuwon. (The Blazers lost the toss, got the No. 2 pick and chose Sam Bowie over Michael Jordan, but that's another story.)

Russian Soccer's Long Season

There are many, many different ways to structure a sport. But  nearly every structure has one thing in common: it determines one winner each year.

This annual cycle of sports seems natural to us. One Super Bowl a year, one Champions League, one Nascar points title, one World Cup skiing circuit.
There are some special events like the Olympics that are held less often, but the basic national leagues nearly all follow a year-long cycle.

Mexico and some Central and South American soccer leagues defy the tradition by holding two championships a year, generally called the Apertura ("opening") and Clausura ("closing"). Two champions every year means there's more silverware to go around.

Now Russia's soccer league is going in the other direction, stretching its season to a year and a half..
The reason for this odd long season is that Russia is shifting its soccer system from one based on a calendar year to the more typical European structure running from Fall to Spring. The 2010 season began in March and ended in November. The 2011 season again began in March, but will continue all the way into Spring 2012. Then the next season will be on the standard European calendar, beginning in Fall 2012.


Stretching the Russian Cup competition for an extra six months is not that difficult; more time will be put between each round. But a new ad hoc system had to be found for the league. There are 16 teams in Russia's top division, and ordinarily they play each other twice each for a 30 game season. That's not nearly enough for this special 50% longer season.