So, during group matches, each of the teams tallies 3 points for a win, 1 point for a draw and 0 points for a loss.

OK, that all sound reasonable on the surface. But as one looks at it a bit more in detail, something is not quite right.

Not all draws are equal! I bet any football fan can voice some opinion on the difference between a 1:1 draw match and a 3:3 draw match. The 3:3 match is obviously more exciting. And that’s not all. It also demonstrates in some way that the two teams both have the skills to crack open the other’s gate, more so than the two teams at a 1:1 draw.

OK, so what do I propose to enhance the rules? While it would be nice to have further rules to differentiate the draws of 3:3 from 1:1, there is a bigger issue I am trying to stress here. And that is the 0:0 draws!

I can see from the organizers’ point of view, there is not a good way to differentiate a 0:0 draw from a 1:1 draw any more than for a 1:1 draw from a 3:3 draw. This is understandable from a very symbolic reasoning. But one should never ignore the fact that 0 is fundamentally different from a positive number, in the real world as well as in mathematics.

What about in the real world? Try to tell the world that a pack of candy or bonbon once priced at $10 now is on sale for $1 or for $0 (free). And the world will react with a day and night difference.

Long in ancient history, human could count. They counted from 1, 2 to 10, to 100, etc. Even though they knew the difference between 10 and 100 (with one 0 vs with two 0s), 0 was only a place holder, not an actual number: there was not a concept of number zero. This had been for many thousands of years until as late as the 7th century when an Indian mathematician introduced the number zero. Only since then, we actually learned about the use of number 0. Doesn’t this indicate that the number 0 is very special?

Coming back to football, while there are quantitative differences among 1:1, 2:2, 3:3 and so on, 0:0 is fundamentally different. To treat it the same as the others is the misuse of the number 0.

While the two teams of 1:1 draw demonstrate their skills and knowhows on how to crack open the other’s gate, the two of 0:0 draw fail to do that. They only demonstrate that they are not much different from a bunch of toddlers put on the football field with no clue on what to do.

And the above is only from the competition point of view, without the consideration of having any spectators. But the World Cup is for the world to watch. Some paid $200 for a ticket plus $1000+ hefty traveling costs to go to the stadiums. Hundreds of millions more sit at the TV for 2 hours, seemingly without out of pocket expense but actually with invested time that might be worth per hour $10 or $100 for some and $1 million for some others. What do they get? Only some laughters for incompetence? The 0:0 match of “professionals” is worse than the same of toddlers for the spectators as watching the toddlers playing is at least about caring for the future of humanity.

So what am I proposing? (Do I have a right to propose? I am not proposing this for myself, I am proposing it for all who understand and agree with what I mentioned above).

If no further penalties are to be imposed, the two team with 0:0 draw should at most get 0 point, rather than 1.

Cheers! Santé! Prost!