Man City 4 Real Madrid 3: Football’s greatest fear and greatest strength is chaos

Chaos is at the heart of football and it’s why Man City 4 Real Madrid 3 can happen and it’s why it’s brilliant.

I love a good statistic. By ‘good’ I mean one which is so obscure as to really annoy people who hate statistics. There’s nothing quite so pleasurable as seeing someone fulminate against the use of xA or ‘progressive carrying distance’ numbers as though it is in some way neutering and emasculating their football knowledge.

I see stats as the hidden matrix which underlies a game. And who doesn’t love a good heat map? An especially active player can produce a heat map that resembles a psychedelic mandala which you can stare at long enough to lose your ego. And we could all do with doing that.

However, the danger is to think that if we drill deep enough into the data we will find some sort of profound revelation of the game’s mysteries, that we will discover the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything is 42. Or possibly 4-4-2.

But we won’t.

Indeed, every statistical analysis of any aspect of football, no matter how broad or granular, should come with a Warning: Chaos Present red flashing light.

Football is chaos: ‘complete disorder and confusion’.

More specifically ‘the property of a complex system whose behaviour is so unpredictable as to appear random, owing to great sensitivity to small changes in conditions, Jeff.’

Champions League? You’re having a right f***ing laugh

There is no statistic for chaos but it is at play at all times, making unpredictable things happen. The reliable goalkeeper who inexplicably lets a ball between his legs, the 30-yard piledriver from a player who has never scored before. A gust of wind making a curling ball go the wrong side of the post.

While it is invisible, cannot be calculated, counted or be relied on in any way, chaos is nonetheless the thing which dictates how every game develops. It is overarching and implicit in everything.

We don’t like this. We want to think humans are in control. Look, we can measure everything. Indeed, we have built our civilisation on this concept. But we’re not.

Football is chaos but we treat it as though it is a science. We treat it as though it will reveal its truths via deep analysis and thought, but the truth is we don’t know what is going to happen, we can never know what is going to happen and even if we think we do because we get some predictions right, ultimately football will make fools of all of us because of chaos.

Because, for all the brilliant statistical analysis, it is always analysing in hindsight. It is measuring what has happened and while what has happened may be a good indicator of what will happen, it is never a guarantee because underneath it all lies chaos, constantly disrupting patterns and measures, constantly undermining what we fool ourselves into thinking are absolutes. And it is this which keeps us coming back for more, even though most of the time we don’t realise it.

The thought that anything can happen is anathema to the corporate business world of football which seeks profits from predictable outcomes by reducing chaos and increasing predictability and conformity. This has become such a profound influence on football, especially at the higher levels, that we mistake it for some sort of innate, natural state. It isn’t.

But try as they might, they can never completely get rid of chaos. No-one is ever completely in control and anything that could possibly happen, might and occasionally will happen. Some find this disturbing because it feels too adrift, too free of moorings to sanity. Surely there must be some science behind the game; it can’t just be a load of random moves and happenings with unpredictable consequences.

But that is exactly what it is. As clever and insightful as we can be, we can never know for sure what is going to happen from one moment to the next.

Chaos rules and that’s how we ended up with Manchester City 4 Real Madrid 3. And that’s absolutely brilliant.