Chaos Theory

"We tend to trace the route of a goal back to the opening of the move – or at most, the breakdown of the previous one – when in truth its foundations stretch back to kick-off and the first decisions made by every player on the pitch. The reason Götze scored that goal was no more because of Schürrle’s trickery or Götze’s skill, as it was an Argentinian player’s decision to make a back-pass rather than a clearance in the second minute."

Episode Sixty Five of the Blizzard Podcast looks back at ‘Chaos Theory’ by Alex Keble, first published in Issue Nineteen in December 2015. An article which poses many questions, not least whether there’s any point in analysing football from a journalistic or coaching perspective if chaos theory truly applies to matches, it looks at the deterministic nature of the choices we make.

Touching on the illusion (or otherwise) of free will, Alex asks whether any of that matters if we simply consider the artistry and beauty of the game itself.

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