Sometime last week, the UEFA Champions League finals took place in Wembley Stadium in London. The general conclusion was that on that day, the better club, FC Barcelona of Spain won the trophy. As is expected, the punditry went out to express opinions and theories on why FC Barcelona completely dominated the match and what that implies about the football tradition of England, where the vanquished team is based. As usual, most of the commentary was not worthy of reading, leave alone taking seriously.
In my view, the standout analysis of the match and its outcomes came from the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson. His article is definitely worthy of reading and reflection upon. And yet, he too missed a delicate point and made a common error. By way of summary, his argument is that the dominance of FC Barcelona suggests that the approaches chosen by English teams is manifestly inferior. Going further, he posits that England may be better suited for rugby, the sport in which it has produced a recent world beating team. No errors so far, except that he alludes to the fact that rugby is a distinct sport in the sense that areas with the highest participation in rugby are also areas with the lowest levels of crime.
Be that as it may, it is still a leap in abstraction unless he can prove that the direction of causality heads from Rugby towards low violence. Is it not just possible that areas that experience low levels of violence in the first instance are attracted to rugby? Mayor Johnson, correlation is not causation.
In my view, the standout analysis of the match and its outcomes came from the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson. His article is definitely worthy of reading and reflection upon. And yet, he too missed a delicate point and made a common error. By way of summary, his argument is that the dominance of FC Barcelona suggests that the approaches chosen by English teams is manifestly inferior. Going further, he posits that England may be better suited for rugby, the sport in which it has produced a recent world beating team. No errors so far, except that he alludes to the fact that rugby is a distinct sport in the sense that areas with the highest participation in rugby are also areas with the lowest levels of crime.
Be that as it may, it is still a leap in abstraction unless he can prove that the direction of causality heads from Rugby towards low violence. Is it not just possible that areas that experience low levels of violence in the first instance are attracted to rugby? Mayor Johnson, correlation is not causation.
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