The explosion in popularity of web-based fantasy football competitions is exacerbating the plague of unconstructive and superfluous football analysis amongst fans and ‘experts’ alike.
It is one step further towards the gradual Americanization of a game that has so far resisted attempts to be oversimplified through statistics.
Football is spatially abstract and at any moment allows for infinite possibilities, each decision completely and utterly original.
The simultaneous freedom of movement enjoyed by 22 players is concurrently liberating and restrictive, and to assume that events can be viewed objectively in a game that is at its core subjective is farcical.
Yet it would be similarly farcical to assume that fantasy football’s raison d’être is somehow malevolent, created by the sporting equivalent of the Axis of Evil to bring football to its knees.
The analogy is excessively hyperbolic, nonetheless to understand the game’s popularity is to understand the level of thoughtfulness with which an average fan would approach a football match. Events affecting point scores include goals, assists, cards, saves and playing time.
Would an overlapping fullback have had space to play a ball into the penalty area if a wide midfielder had not made an inside run towards a more central position, taking an opposition wide player with him?
The shot on goal is an end product, the culmination of an attacking move reliant upon so many factors external to the striker himself that he is merely the final worker on the production line, gift-wrapping what was largely formed before it got to him.
It is only after the departure of Xabi Alonso that unobservant Liverpool fans realized his true worth, while only the truly attentive understand Sergio Busquets indispensability to Spain. Football is not a game that lends itself to statistics, yet fantasy football is game based fundamentally on objective data.
And while its popularity grows exponentially, we can only hope that Y2K is just running late.
General Ashnak
Guest
... do you realise that Fantasy Football is a game right? That the outcomes in it have absolutely no bearing on how the indivdual teams within the competition play? That in order to be successfull as a fantasy football manager you do not look at formations, rather you look at potential return/purchase point? I personally have learned nothing about football playing fantasy football, neither has it changed the way I either watch the game or understand it. This sounds like a closet attack on the use of statistics as a tool to help understand the strengths and weaknesses of how a team plays (something fantasy football does not care about - I would not play 3 wing backs, 3 wingers & 2 CAMs and 2 CFs in real life - but I would in fantasy football).
apaway
Guest
Oh you killjoy! For those of us without a team to support in the EPL, fantasy football gives every game some interest.
Ben of Phnom Penh
Guest
I fail to see the correlation between fantasy football and a degradation in the analysis of the game. I think what is echoed here is a fear, not a reality.
Macs.football
Roar Rookie
I think most LFC fans realised what Xabi Alonso brought to their team and rather it was the wider football viewing public that downplayed his contribution for LFC.