Delusional Deference To The Successful

On European Super League, Politics, And Luck

For the last 50 hours, give or take, soccer in Europe has been rocked by the question of this European Super League, a purported Champions League replacement that would have guaranteed spots in the yearly competition for European supremacy to 15 founding clubs - therefore ensuring that no matter how bad any of the teams were, they'd make it the next year. 6 English teams were amongst the traitors, including my beloved Manchester United - and if they stay involved in this, it will be my formerly beloved United. The outrage has been massive, except from me.

That lack of outrage isn't about a lack of concern for the idea - I think it is a monstrosity, but I knew it would never happen. Between the fan outrage which has been immense and the threats that clubs would be booted from their domestic competitions, I knew it was a non-starter. When UEFA put out a statement saying that players who play in the Super League will lose national team eligibility, I knew the idea wouldn't last the week, and so I never held the panic so many did. It was a tirefire of an idea, held by billionaires who didn't understand the worlds they were messing with, and fundamentally, they misread the fight they'd get for it. And now, Chelsea have leaked they're out, and others are backing out too.

If you thought Chelsea was going to be the last team to bail, you were always wrong - they were just the first, and I'd be very surprised if this monstrosity makes it to the end of the week intact as an idea. The reason is simple - Chelsea has two England internationals on their team in Mason Mount and Ben Chilwell, plus American wonderboy Christian Pulisic, all of whom will be linchpins in their respective national teams for a decade, at least. Why would any of those trio - or even the Timo Werner tier of players who can make a national team appearance with regularity - risk that for a club, when they could just go somewhere else? Of course they wouldn't. My immediate reaction to the news was to crack a joke to a friend about how Mount would look in a West Ham jersey playing beside his long time best friend Declan Rice, an inversion of the long standing assumption that Rice would find his way back to Chelsea to play with Mount. The only reason it was a joke was because I knew nobody would be stupid enough to let it get that far.

A lot of people disagreed with my assessment, because they assumed that the leaders of the clusterfuck of shitfuckery called the European Super League had longterm planning done, and were prepared to weather the storm that was coming. Nope, it was just a greedy power grab to take JP Morgan's money, that's all it was, and there was no planning for what happened when UEFA (or, hilariously, the British Government) fought back. The only reason people didn't see this for what it was - a dead end proposal with no chance of succeeding - was because of a deference to the supposed intelligence of those who were proposing it.

That same deference is also ruining political analysis.

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The first election I properly covered in the public space was the 2019 Canadian election, an election in which my previous home did best of anyone. The model was a smashing success, and the coverage, anchored by me, did the best in not presenting a race that was never close as competitive. That whole campaign, people were always waiting for us to snap back, and we never did, because the data didn't justify it. We were borne out as correct, and yet for weeks people doubted us - namely because we were the new kids on the block. I, as the more public facing part of the team, was confidently saying the Liberals would win, and I was right. And yet, deference to established forecasters - namely Grenier and Fournier - meant that many people didn't look at us as realistic options. They deferred to the supposed intelligence of those in a position of power, deferring to the institutions that backed them, instead of just looking at the actual quality of argument being used.

That deference was extended by many to the Biden campaign, who claimed that Biden going to Ohio and sending Obama to Florida so much meant that they knew something more than we did publicly. They would say that the race is close and everything was to play for, and those statements have been subsequently used to claim that the Biden campaign knew more than they did, but they didn't. They were flying blind, and got lucky to keep the House and gain a trifecta.

That deference is often extended to 538 and Cook and Crystal Ball, who regularly find themselves on the wrong sides of arguments - from 538 giving fucking Trafalgar an A- to Cook starting Doug Jones' reelection bid as a tossup to Crystal Ball saying Murkowski is safe to win again in Alaska, all arguments that either were or are risible. But, because of who it is, they must have a good rationale for their nonsense, right? Of course not, and yet, here we are. No amount of logic or past failures will ever mean that we properly assess these places, because we will always give deference to them. It's a huge problem.

As a society, as a world, we are too focused on outcomes, results and not process - and especially so when the conversation comes around to short term pain for long term gains. Tanking in North American sports is better because yes, some short term wins might be nice, but longer term serious contention is better, and giving yourself a better shot at elite talent is smart. Democrats chasing the sugar high of one last win in Florida instead of building state parties and apparatuses in Alaska, Montana, and Kansas is that exact same short termist logic triumphing, but because it is the argument of the political elite - the people who won it twice for Democrats, and have singularly failed to do it again - it is taken more seriously.

We rate billionaires and rich people as smart, and frequently ask them their opinions on topics of governance, of war and peace, good and evil. Just because Howard Schultz managed to figure out how to make billions selling shitty coffee doesn't mean he actually knows anything, and yet he was taken seriously when he floated an independent Presidential bid - which crashed when he thought FDR was President within 50 years of 2019, and generally showed his idiocy. There are clips of Trump being interviewed by serious journalists about Iraq and the financial crisis, all because he was a rich guy. What Donald Trump thought about the fucking Iraq War should have been irrelevant, and yet, he was asked about it, solely because he was rich.

The fetish for results - "well, Dems won a trifecta, they can't have done that badly" - over process is why the Super League was taken seriously. Because it was rich people who thought it up, and rich people are endlessly afforded the benefit of the intellectual doubt, we took this risible proposal seriously. It is why we pretend the Biden campaign, which completely misread the map in the General and almost collapsed so badly as to lose the primary, are hailed as geniuses. People don't like the idea of luck dictating fortunes to a large degree, so a veneer of intellectual prowess is afforded the lucky that is often undeserved.

Thankfully, the Super League is dying a quick death, but the delusional deference to the successful must also die. In politics, business, and sport, sometimes the good are lucky - and we all  must acknowledge that.