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Comment by ignoramous | Hacker News Reader

Broadcasters rule football. Even if there was no regulation, the broadcasters would be absolutely livid if their audience wanted to see the best players & top clubs play tiki-taka but were served smash & grab.

The Premier League & the Champions League are money spinning ventures for a reason.

What you say still happens in International Cricket, but not usually for club tournaments like The 100 or the Indian Premier League.

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The broadcasters have absolutely no say whatsoever in how a groundsman prepares their pitch for an upcoming fixtures. In fact the kind of gamesmanship we are talking about happened as recently as the last few games of the most recent English season. Sunderland played Coventry in a two-legged playoff semi-final, having won the first leg 2-1 in Coventry they had a one-goal advantage going into the home fixture. Coventry had a player Milan van Ewijk who was able to deliver a very long and precise throw-in, so any throw in Sunderland conceded within 20-ish yards of their own goal would basically be like conceding a corner (a set-piece seen as a good goal-scoring opportunity). Sunderland mitigated against this by shrinking the distance between the touchline and the advertising boards at the side of the pitch, shortening the distance van Ewijk could run prior to taking his throw-in, and stunting his ability to turn it into a goal-scoring opportunity.

> Sunderland played Coventry in a two-legged playoff semi-final, having won the first leg 2-1 in Coventry

Feel for Frank, but this wasn't the top clubs & best players playing in the Premier League.

It was a very high-profile example of exactly this type of shenanigans during a live game picked up by the biggest broadcaster in the country, which will have been watched by millions across the world. The claim was that this simply isn't allowed happen, and it literally happened. I don't even particularly like the English leagues, but this is a daft thing to brush off

> millions across the world

Debatable playoffs have the same reach as PL & CL matches between top clubs.

> daft

I don't doubt that the home team may make changes to their advantage, but I don't think the broadcasters would particularly like it if the pitch absolutely destroyed any chance at good entertainment. In International Cricket, the equivalent would be preparing the pitch to the home team's strengths (which went horribly wrong for India, the home team, in the 2023 World Cup Final, which was as drab as they come).

Consider the recent Club World Cup final and semi-finals, hosted on an American football field with shitty SIS pitch. I saw more slips from players in the semi-final than I've ever seen in a single game.

None of those field issues were due to home field gamesmanship though. That was shitty US planning and conversion of NFL stadiums with turf into temporary real grass fields. Comparing the two shows a total stretching of the storyline. Yes, the CWC fields were embarrassingly bad. Has nothing to do with TFA though

Are the world cup pitches going to be better?

doubtful, but maybe they can learn from this experience. it's managed by USSocer, so I don't have a lot of faith.

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