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    Two Random Groups?

    When two groups were as weak as the England and Greece ones, could the teams have finished in any order? Would the results have been less random if UEFA had just tossed a coin six times?

    #2
    Two Random Groups?

    I don't think anybody before the tournement started thought the England group was weak -
    Host Nation, France and Sweden, oh and England - or am I missing something here?
    Even in hindsight - it was a tough group.

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      #3
      Two Random Groups?

      could the teams have finished in any order?
      Yes. They could have scored different numbers of goals and got different results.

      I really don't understand the question.

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        #4
        Two Random Groups?

        Neither do I. On the face of it, it seems to be a call for tournaments to be more predictable, but I'm sure there's more to it than that.

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          #5
          Two Random Groups?

          satchmo seems hell bent on trying to find a better model for the championships, but it's not really clear what the problem is with this one, aside from what i assume is his desire to somehow ensure that the 8 QFs genuinely and without doubt represent the best 8 teams in Europe, which is never going to happen, and indeed nor should it. The only way that it's going to end up as he wants it is if we use the FIFA rankings (or similar system) and actually dispense with a football tournament altogether.

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            #6
            Two Random Groups?

            What I mean is that Sweden and Ukraine both had weaknesses, yet both could feel, with some justification, that England and France did not play better than them over the three games.

            I'm also echoing Arsene Wenger's point that tournaments are too short to prove anything: you wouldn't judge a league after three games. Thus any conclusions about whether England and France in 2012 are better than England and France in 2010 are simply based on too small a sample of games in which the results could mostly have gone either way.

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              #7
              Two Random Groups?

              But that's the case with all tournaments that aren't a traditional league format over 30 or 40 games.
              The tournaments exist for a number of reasons. I should imagine that achieving an objective ranking is pretty far down that list.

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                #8
                Two Random Groups?

                Fair enough. I need to put my OCD about randomness aside when I watch international cup football, and just enjoy the skills, thrills and spills.

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                  #9
                  Two Random Groups?

                  satchmo, check out Rob Eastaway's book on maths in sport. In it, he simulates a full league season where results are generated at random.

                  What would you expect the final league table to look like?

                  In related news, here's a picture of a quincux.

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