World Cup Tie-Break Rules, Good? or Bad?

First off, I want to say sorry for the month long break between Rants.  As a Boston sports fan the last month has been tough in terms of content to write about.  With the Bruins being knocked out early in the playoffs and the Red Sox seeming to be in a constant slump of winning 2 games in row then losing 4 in a row, it's been a rough beginning to the summer to say the least.  The World Cup however has shot some adrenaline into my sports fanaticism and given some excitement to what seemed to be a really slow summer sports wise.  This Rant isn't necessarily geared towards talking about the US team and their heartbreaking tie this past Sunday to Portugal or their chances against Germany and advancing to the next round, but rather I am here to Rant about the World Cup tie-breaking rules.

In America it seems that when two teams are tied at the end of season with a chance to go to the playoffs, usually the two teams' head to head records are the first tie breaker in order to determine who gets the chance to advance.  In the World Cup however head to head match-up is the third tie-breaker behind goal differential and the amount of goals scored.  While that seems weird, and at first head scratching, as I began analyze it I think in this case it is actually a good idea, even if it could potentially back fire on the US come Thursday.

To give a better picture of why this is good, let's look at two American sports College Football and Major League Baseball.  As American sports fans, I think something we can all agree on, unless for some reason your team is tanking for a better draft pick, is that we hope our team is in contention come the end of the season.  Nothing is worse knowing your team is completely out of the playoff picture with half the season to go.  Until this upcoming season when the four team playoff will be implemented, one of the knocks on college football was if your team had more than one loss then they were basically completely out of contention of playing for the National Title.  With the playoff however and strength of schedule being weighted, more teams will be apt to play stronger and more exciting non-conference games and having two losses may not be the total end of the world.  As a result fans of teams can still have hope later in the regular season than they used to have.

Similarly, Major League Baseball realized they had a similar problem to college football with teams being completely out of contention come September and because of this fans weren't going to the stadium and watching the games on TV.  Seeing this was a problem, and trying to find more ways to make the end of the season more meaningful and exciting, Bud Selig and Major League Baseball decided to add a second Wild Card team two seasons ago. With this second Wild Card team, many more teams now have meaning to play in September and it gives the fans an incentive to follow their teams down the playoff stretch.

To bring this Rant full circle, I will now say why it is good the head to head match-up being the third, and not first tie-breaker,  is good for the World Cup.  As a US fan, having head to head be the third tie-breaker does actually hurt their chances. For instance, if head to head was the first tie-breaker, then they wouldn't have to worry about what Ghana does on Thursday, since they already beat them.  With goal differential being the number one tie-breaker however, Ghana is still very much a live within the tournament.  By having goal differential be the number tie breaker, it makes the third game of group play have a lot more meaning for the most part.  While there will be games like Spain and Australia yesterday, where both teams were already knocked out prior the playing the third game, by having goal differential be the first tie-breaker it keeps the chances of advancing for many teams alive.

While the tie-break rules may not benefit the US right now, I actually applaud FIFA for their tie-breaking rules since it increases the number of relevant teams and games.  Let's just hope though the US plays strong against Germany on Thursday (or agree to a tie) and that we won't have to worry about the various tie-breaking scenarios.