Football magic

I haven't written about football for a while now but the lost of ManUtd  to Boro - specifically the question of what next for Manchester United has made ponder about professional football. I have been working in Oil and Gas  business for more than two decades and I completely understand that it is business and nothing but business. Yes we do care about environment, employee safety etc but those are part of business necessities. We do that to comply with regulations as failing to do so means loosing license to operate which means loosing money

So money is the driver of all professional clubs like both United and Boro. There is a pretty wide gap between the two. United is pushing to the 4th position of premier league while Boro is currently 7th in the Championship which a league below Premier League. The game was played in United's home and the most expensive of Boro player is less than 10% of the most expensive player on United side. The odds were of course against Boro and yet they were drawn and United lost on the sudden death part of penalty shoot out. United fans would certainly complained about the equalizer but of course they should know better than United should simply kill the game by the end of the first half. 

Why would United fail to win the game ? Boro's supporters would not care how but they might say it was magic or luck. Human beings do believe such thing as luck - otherwise how would you explain Ronaldo -of all players- missed the penalty? but of course human made mistakes and that would be more plausible to explain the lost of Giants like United. There is uncertainties and randomness, but human brain would resist to see that and instead believes that somehow order would prevail. 

This uncertainty if favors minnows like Boro would certainly gives impression of magic, being lucky and believe in fairytale. If the game were to be replayed in another alternative universe United might simply won it easily. Statistically they should but of course there is always chance for the unthinkable. And that would makes life more interesting, isn't it - specially if you were no fan of United