Lev Landau, the Russian scientist, said that “cosmologists are often in error but rarely in doubt”.
It is an observation that has come to mind often over the past 72 hours or so as the world and his brother have offered opinions as to why England failed so dramatically in the World Cup.
It is not so much the explanations that jar as the finger-jutting certainty with which they are expressed. “It was that bloody Capello,” says one. “The players are too cosseted,” says another. “It was those incompetent suits at the FA,” says a third.
Others condemn the lack of academies; the preponderance of foreign players in the Barclays Premier League; the volume of matches in the top flight; 4-4-2; the over-emphasis on the Steven Gerrard-Frank Lampard axis; the under-emphasis on the Steven Gerrard-Frank Lampard axis.
In his book The Death of Economics, Paul Ormerod observes that for all the confident assertions of economists, there is one quality that is conspicuous by its absence: an acknowledgement of uncertainty. “The record of economists in understanding and forecasting the economy at the macro-level is not especially impressive,” Ormerod writes. “Indeed, uncharitable writers might be inclined to describe it as appalling.”
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It is a fair point. But it is one that can be made with infinitely more force at those offering definitive pronouncements on England’s downfall.
After all, at least economists make forecasts. They look at the data, sift the evidence, swig the snake oil and go public with what they think will happen. Inflation at 5 per cent, unemployment at 10 per cent and bank bonuses at 500 per cent by the end of the year, that kind of thing.
Even if they express the opinions with more force than is merited and wear ties that are generally too red, economists can at least be judged on results.
The difference with those confidently telling us what went wrong with the England football team is that they didn’t even do the decent thing and forewarn us about the calamity that was about to be visited on the nation.
They neglected to tell us just how badly England would perform. It is such a pity. Just think how much more easily we could have endured the World Cup had we been told in advance how awful it was going to be.
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After all, it is not as if the number of foreign players in the Premier League was not a readily available titbit of information before the kick-off against the United States. It is not as if we were unaware of the number of matches the England squad had played in the top flight last season. It is not as if we were oblivious to the relative number of academies, coaches, Sunday league teams or whatever.
Indeed, despite all these readily available facts, many were predicting that England would do rather well. Many were touting them as among the favourites. Many were betting on them to beat Germany (at not very favourable odds). Could it be that England’s failure — in the teeth of expectation — has led to the very anger from which the mania for tub-thumping “explanations” has been distilled?
Complexity is to blame. We look at the world, something catches our eye and we make all manner of inferences without stopping to consider the miasma of other factors in play.
When Fabio Capello took over as England manager, his most eye-catching initiative was to treat the players like schoolchildren. England then happened to win a succession of matches in qualification. The inference was inevitable. Treat England players like schoolchildren and they will win football matches. QED.
When things started to go wrong for England in South Africa, those who made the initial leap of logic found themselves leaping the other way, without seeming to notice the epistemological abyss they were hurdling. The “Joyless Regime that Sucked the Life out of England’s World Cup” was a headline from a publication that had previously eulogised Capello’s dictatorial style. Hindsight bias is a wonderful thing, of course, but do we really need to make a virtue of it?
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Lord Kaldor, one of the great thinkers of the last century, observed that Father Christmas is often to be seen in shopping malls in the run-up to December 25. “Santa Claus must cause Christmas!” he quipped. OK, so it is hardly Ricky Gervais, but we can all catch his drift. Correlation is not the same thing as causation. Just because one thing precedes another, it does not mean that one causes the other.
Indeed, a moment’s contemplation demonstrates the problems with the proposed “causes” of England’s failure. If the team are too tired, why have the foreigners who grace the Premier League not been afflicted (and why have the South American nations, who played 18 matches in qualification, done terribly well)? If it is because England failed to use the Jabulani ball in their warm-up friendlies, why did France (who did) also fail?
If the problem is the ability of the players, why are the same players so good when performing for their clubs (the wages of the England team are the second highest for any side at the World Cup)? If the problem is the proportion of foreign players in the league, why do many nations with fewer foreigners perform even worse? If the problem is a foreign manager, why have we also failed with a succession of English managers?
None of this implies that these variables don’t matter; it merely suggests that the way they interact with results, and each other, is more complex than can be asserted on a radio phone-in while banging a fist on the kitchen table.
There have been calls for a “root and branch” inquiry into England’s failure, but the reality is that — as in any complex situation — there are as many potential answers as there are possible witnesses.
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This does not mean we should fail to reflect on the causes of failure, but it does suggest we should conduct our investigation with less self-certainty and rather more humility; with more critical engagement and less of an inclination for facile scapegoating. As Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the mathematician, put it: “My major hobby is teasing people who take themselves and the quality of their knowledge too seriously and who don’t have the guts to sometimes say, ‘I don’t know.’”