The Clutch

Is there a notion of the clutch or being clutch in soccer? The clutch seems predicated on a moment in which you can either rise to the pressure or wither under it. In soccer, unlike basketball and football, there aren’t tailor-made moments to shine or fail because the game isn’t discrete like basketball and football, so there are no moments, just one really long moment. That, probably, is a large part of why Americans don’t like soccer and why it’s also such a beautiful game. Also, every score in soccer has a little touch of magic whereas plays in basketball and football can be adjudged as plays that ought to have been made if the person was clutch and had elevated their game.

That is, of course, excepting the penalty kick shootout. But although every individual PK taker ought to make his shot, it’s probably with only, say, 80% likelihood. So for five PKs taken, we should expect only four will be made. In that situation, you can’t really blame the guy who misses and call him not clutch. It’s math, man. Really, everyone knows that PK shootout as a resolution to a tied match just translates to, someone has to win. Therefore, someone has to lose, and the loser is somewhat arbitrary, so you can’t really be too hard on him. In other words, the loser is just someone who doesn’t win and get the prize. It’s not someone who has a whole narrative constructed about them as to why they are inferior beings for myriad reasons (which is what we do to losers when we think the mechanism for resolving games is legitimate and they failed under those meaningful rules).