Just deserts?

To talk of a team "deserving" to win a football match isn't just unhelpful, it's to ignore something fundamental about the sport

Who deserved it? It’s a question, more than any other, that I hate being asked on podcasts and radio. Who deserved to win? As I’ve got older, I’ve increasingly tried to avoid answering it, partly because I don’t really understand what it means, partly because I’m not sure it really matters but mainly because I think even to dress a question in those terms is slightly to misunderstand football.

Let’s ask a different but related question. Which game did I most enjoy? As a player, such as I was, it’s very easy: a 3-1 win for Balliol IIIs against St Hugh’s in 1996-97. They were top of the table, we were terrible, but we defended heroically and with a degree of good fortune, and I got the goal that put us 2-1 up with about 20 minutes to go, taking a fist in the face from their goalkeeper as I did so. I ended the game with two black eyes and barely able to walk with cramp in my left calf. Had we deserved it? Not in terms of shots, not in terms of quality, clearly. But in the bar that night, there was a clear sense we had deserved it because of how hard we’d worked, how many players had hurled themselves in the way of shots and run themselves into the ground.

Similarly as a fan, one of my favourite away trips was Sunderland’s 1-0 win on a classic Baseball Ground mudbath in November 1992. Derby dominated from start to finish, hit the woodwork twice and had two goals ruled out for offside, but Terry Butcher and Richard Ord were magnificent, Mickey Gray made his debut as a half-time substitute and Don Goodman got the only goal with a bobbling volley from the edge of the box. Derby probably won the xG about 4 to 0.1, but does that mean they deserved it?

Did Liverpool deserve to win away to Paris Saint-Germain on Wednesday? L’Equipe’s front page described their 1-0 win as a “braquage” – a robbery – which implies there was something morally dubious about it. But this wasn’t like France beating Ireland in a World Cup qualifier thanks to the Thierry Henry handball; it was about the excellence of a goalkeeper, Alisson making half a dozen outstanding saves. It perhaps says something about how we consider football generally that brilliance from a goalkeeper is seen as somehow fortunate, whereas nobody would be talking about a robbery if a forward had scored three brilliant goals in a game in which his side was largely outclassed but won 3-2.