Thursday, February 10, 2011

Three Sides: One Too Many?

I haven't watched all that much soccer in my life, but the other night's Arsenal-Newcastle United match was one of the wildest, most improbably entertaining I've ever seen.  3-0 Arsenal after ten minutes, 4-0 at the half, and it ends in a draw?!?!  The shots of Newcastle fan reactions at the high and low points (including some early, thoroughly disgusted walkouts) were priceless.

As great as that match was, my main reason for posting about "the beautiful game" is my discovery of something called "3-sided football".  According to the Wikipedia entry, this three-team, three-goal variant is associated with situationists and psychogeographers and, while theoretically interesting, is perhaps a bit less than beautiful in actual practice. You can read a very fine account of a match here, including a description of an "orgy of free-scoring libertarian collectivism".

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