Fans to Choose Man of the Match at World Cup 2010. Is This a Good Thing?
Bit of interesting World Cup news today. For the first time in history the man of the match award for each World Cup game will be chosen by fans, instead of by FIFA’s technical committee. My initial reaction was “Hooray! Power to the People!”, because it’s always good when we the fans have a voice. Basically fans around the world will be able to register their choice for man of the match in each game via text message and/or online voting. Like I said, power to the people.
Except after a bit of pondering (I’m a possible ponderholic) I’m not so sure. FIFA’s technical committee is made up of former players, coaches and other football experts from around the world. The current chairman is Temarii Reynald from Tahiti, who’s also current chairman of the Oceania football confederation for example. As such, I’m assuming the committee took its role very seriously, and chose each man of the match based on the performances they just witnessed. Part of me worries that fans may not take this quite so seriously.
Once a decision like this is opened up to the global public, you invite all kinds of other external factors. Fans have favourites that they’ll be biased towards, and so someone like Leo Messi (who’s impossible not to love right now) could conceivably win an online vote for a half-decent albiceleste performance, even if someone less glamorous – let’s say Walter Samuel – has had a flawless game at the back for Argentina. On the flipside, some players have no chance. Does anyone see Thierry Henry winning any popularity contests in South Africa? He’d have to score 50 goals in one game to win the vote.
Or maybe I’m wrong. Maybe there’s something to the wisdom of crowds idea that the majority will usually make the right decision. I hope the world works like that. I really do.
What I’m 99% certain of is that FIFA didn’t consider any of the above when switching the man of the match award to a public vote. Because it isn’t just the man of the match award we’re talking about, it’s actually the YourNameHere Man of the Match Award, and has been since 2006. What better way to have the sponsors name repeated multiple times throughout a game than by having commentators and on screen graphics that remind people: “Don’t forget to vote for your Budweiser Man of the Match”? So maybe it’s not power to the people. Maybe it’s power to the sponsors instead.
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