2022 has been a year of upsets for the sporting arena, and 2023 is seemingly turning out to be similar. But why? We take a look at some of the upsets of two sports, Football(the real one) and Cricket.
23 November, 2022. A visibly off-colour Japanese team stunned fan favourites Germany by putting on display Bluelock-level antics with 2 late goals. Japan 2-1 Germany.
Image From ESPN
Exactly a day before, on 22 November 2022, Saudi Arabia clipped the wings of Lionel Scaloni's Argentina, the eventual world cup winners.
It didn't stop there. The tournament favourites Brazil would get knocked out in the final 8 by the nice guys of football, Croatia, whereas Morocco's fairytale run would cut short Cristiano Ronaldo's World Cup campaign. It wasn't just the World Cup that surprised football fans.
Right now in England, Mikel Arteta's young and polished Arsenal stands atop the Premier League, in a season that saw league giants Liverpool and Chelsea in a middle-of-the-table tussle.
Image from Goal.com
Back in Italy, SSC Napoli looks to rewind the clock back to the 1980s and re-establish Italian dominance in Europe. As of 25/02/2023, the Blues find themselves a whopping 15 points clear on top of Serie A, ahead of the big 3: Juventus, Inter and AC Milan. Though, in Germany, Bayern Munich still dominate, they face nerve-racking competition from wonderteam Union Berlin, rivals Dortmund and the buzzing RB Leipzig.
Football isn't the only sport to witness such rise; cricket too had more or less the same kind of resurgence of underdogs. In an era where most fans complain of power dilution of the cricket arena, 2022 has been a contrasting year.
On 29 May 2022, we saw an underrated Gujarat Titans team go on and win the IPL in their first ever season, and do so with unprecedented level of dominance in the league stages, one only second to MI 2020 and perhaps KXIP 2014.
On 12 February 2023, we saw the Sunrisers Eastern Cape team which was written off by many cricketing experts, lift the SA20 title in a somewhat similar fashion.
On 6 November 2022, we saw tournament favourites South Africa get knocked out from the T20 WC by "minnows" Netherlands. The tournament previously saw two time champions West Indies crash out by losing to Ireland and Associates Scotland.
Image From ICC
But... why?
It is perhaps time that we accept that team sports are not superstar centric anymore; a well rounded team of members who benefit from playing together can easily beat a superteam that doesn't exactly do well together. Examples of the former we see in Napoli and Union Berlin, while Liverpool and PSG, to some extent, are turning out to be those of the latter. Napoli, for instance, lacked a big name winger ahead of the Serie A, having just sold Lorenzo Insigne to Toronto FC and with Hirving Lozano not being in the best of form. However, they managed to bring in wonderkid Kvicha Kvaratskhelia from Georgia for just 11.5 million, who went on to pair up with 2021-22 Seria A Best Young Player Victor Osimhen and Lozano to form a formidable front three. Kvicha is now worth more than €60 million, and is nicknamed "Kvaradona" by the fans. Napoli also made a bold move to sell their best defender Koulibaly to Chelsea at a price of €38 million, but brought in a like-for-like replacement in the form of Kim Min-Jae for just €18 million. It's not always about having money, sometimes you should know how to use it well.
Image from the Sun.
I say the above thing about money because there are teams like Chelsea splurting money on players, and teams like PSG stuck with financial fairplay because of the high salaries of their players. The same applies to cricket. In the SA20, MI Capetown assembled a superstar team that many expected to go all the way. In the end, they ended up lacking squad depth and the players didn't really seem to go that well together. On the other hand, take the case of Gujarat Titans in the IPL, who prioritised role-specific players instead of big names. They are the champions now.
Another cause of the success of underdogs is the "moments" aspect of modern sport. Take, for instance, the game between Japan and Germany where Germany had possession for 74% of the game. Japan, however, shone just when needed with two goals in key moments. Maybe it is pressure and expectations of fans that leads big teams to crumble in these crunch moments, especially after they've gotten used to playing in empty stadia due to the pandemic. Or perhaps it is the same pressure and the appeal of the moment that causes the underdogs to thrive. Or maybe it is the lack of pressure on big teams to consider the underdogs as a real threat. In the SA vs NED game, Temba Bavuma made the bold decision to chase, even though they were just back from a horrible collapse against Pakistan while chasing. The toss is not to blame for everything; if perhaps the Proteas had shown the same intensity that they had shown in their encounter with India against the Dutch, the result would have been different. But it was already too late when they started feeling it.
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