The U.S. and Germany play at 1:00am Friday night/Saturday morning Japan time. Anybody going out to watch it? I initially thought that the calculations of possible outcomes was so complicated that it would be better to sleep through the match and just get the result in the morning. But actually it’s a bit easier than I thought. The U.S. will advance to the round of 16 if any of these three things happen: 1) The U.S. wins 2) The U.S. draws with Germany (no matter what happens in the other match) 3) Portugal and Ghana draw (even if the U.S. loses 100 to 0, we still advance if the other match draws) Cheering only gets complicated if the U.S. is down and the other game is not a draw. We still have the advantage over both Portugal (because they suffered a huge goal differential at the hands of Germany, 4-0) and Ghana (because we beat them in our match), but our advantage over Portugal is much greater, because goal differential comes next after points (win=3/draw=1/lose=0) in the list of deciding factors, while beating Ghana is way down the list. So we’re better off if Portugal is winning. If we’re down by just 1 goal, as long as Portugal is winning, we’ll probably advance, because they’d have to win by 4 goals or more to advance instead of us. If Ghana is winning and the U.S. is down, we’re most likely out. In any case, if we’re down and the other game is not a draw, best to just go to bed, because you’ll have to start looking things up in actuary tables to find out if you should be happy or not, and nobody wants to be doing that in real time while trying to watch sports at 2:45 in the morning. Also, if Portugal wins and we lose, which of the two of us advances could be decided by a coin toss, which is the only idea in football that seems worse than the shoot-out. thebiglead/2014/06/22/usa-vs-germany-what-the-u-s-needs-to-advance-after-2-2-portugal-draw/
Posted on: Thu, 26 Jun 2014 08:02:14 +0000
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