It’s not THAT shocking when an inferior team wins a single hockey game, nor soccer match. But the Miracle on Ice is much less surprising than the 1950 Soccer World Cup pool play when the US beat England 1-0. At least most of the US Hockey team went on to play professionally, and were professionally coached and supported, and the USSR team, while very good, didn’t in fact play in the best league in the world.
But the 1950 US soccer team was literally amateurs, not a single one of which was ever a full-time professional player before or after. The English team was the best players from the top professional league in the world.
I mean, the 1950 result is still less shocking than Leicester City, but it’s certainly more shocking than the Miracle on Ice.
I’ll tell you this; Buster Douglas watched a LOT of video. If you wanted to write a book on “How To Beat Mike Tyson,” just write down what Douglas did. With the exception of one error in the eighth, Douglas stubbornly refused to let Tyson fight an up close match and his footwork was just beautiful. Douglas is much taller than Tyson, and he spent the fight using that, making sure he was one or two inches away from Tyson’s impact point.
But we are back to a semantic argument. I take the OP to mean a result that was the most unexpected not the intensity of emotional surprise being experienced at a point in time.
And in any case, the shock of Leicester City went on for months. There was the initial surprise that they could, the alarm that they might, the astonishment that they will, and finally the shock that they did!
Believe me, this was the talking point in UK sport and a source of incredulous scrutiny for months.
I don’t think we’ll be able to sway each other on this. I see ‘most shocking’ as that which caused the most shock, as in the emotional surprise. I know there was scrutiny and disbelief, but the Brazil v. Germany disaster was something else.
No. Brazil was/is (amongst Latinos especially) seen as the Goliath of football. They have won the most WCs. They had never lost to Germany. They were playing at home. They played worse than Saudi Arabia. I’ve never seen anything like this result in the history of sport.
But we still come back to a single game of knock-out football. It doesn’t change the fact that, had the question been formulated prior to that game “is it more likely that Germany beat Brazil 7-1 or Leicester City win the EPL?” then it really wouldn’t be a contest.
In sport shocks usually happen because there is a limited timescale - 90 minutes of game time, maybe longer in some sports - and so less time to correct.
The fantastic achievement of sustaining that over 38 soccer matches is something I’ve never seen. That kind of thing really can’t happen.
I remember watching that live and thinking that I’d misheard, that everyone in the stadium and in the studio had misheard…it was one of the greatest injustices in sport (and probably worthy of being a separate thread theme it itself)
I haven’t watched it in years but as an avid amateur boxing fan I recall thinking it was a slam dunk for Jones according to the rules at the time.
I’m going to watch it again, just to see if time has clouded my thinking.
Just done so…oh wow. It is every bit as bad now as it was then. Here’s the footage for anyone to see.
The numbers show Jones ahead on punches thrown (303 to 188) and punches landing (86 to 32) and there is no way the Korean’s landed punches were anywhere near as punishing as Jones. The Korean had a standing 8 and should’ve really had another.
Sure the Korean lad is game and comes forward and throws a few but, according to the rules at the time they rarely score and for every one that Jones takes he picks off one or two scoring shots in return.
It was as clear a win as I’ve ever seen without a knock-out.
I imagine both would be seen as an impossibility and I respect what Leicester City accomplished. Neither event is likely to happen again in our lifetime and we were lucky enough to experience both.
As something of a yardstick though, Barcelona were thrashed by PSG 4-0 just the other week (and it was a hammering). Bayern Munich beat Arsenal 5-1 recently, In 2011 Man. U. were thrashed…at home…by City 1-6.
And this is just a cursory glance through the records. I’m sure that there are plenty of other examples and all the above are teams playing their peers. i.e. not top of the league vs. bottom. Certainly the equivalent of Brazil vs Germany (Germany were the higher ranked team going in to that 1-7 game, were playing well and were getting better and better).
An equivalent look through the records for something like Leicester championship win throws up nothing.
Interesting you should mention that, in a thread about shocking results…
[Not that Barca -PSG round 2 was more shocking than some others, I still say US -England in 1950 was more surprising and shocking, though maybe less dramatic]
it just goes to show, these type of one-off results happen in football fairly often. And actually Barca - PSG is a pretty good analogy of Germany - Brazil 2014
Goeido going undefeated in the September 2016 Grand Sumo tournament. Was compared in the sumo world to Leicester City’s recent championship. The latter was definitely the first thing I thought of though, and I don’t really follow English football.
I suppose Leicester winning in the EPL is the most shocking since my understanding of that league is that it is dominated by big money teams like Chelsea, Manchester United and Liverpool.
Going on the full season, the 1988 Los Angeles Dodgers may qualify as baseball's most shocking. They had gone 73-89 in 1986 and 1987 and fell to 77-83 the following year. But in 1988 they went 94-67 and beat the more powerful Mets and A's to win the World Series. It's hard to say why. Unlike other Miracle teams like the 1914 Braves, 1967 Red Sox, 1969. Mets and 2008 Rays, they don't seem to have a lot of young talent that suddenly blossoms. They brought in free agent OF Kirk Gibson and he won the MVP. Oral Hersheiser had a great year of pitching. Tim Leary, who as a young Mets prospect suffered in an injury pitching in cold weather,was healthy and reasonably good.
The Dodgers had some luck in the playoffs. David Cone couldn't stand being ridiculed after he ridiculed Hersheiser in a NY Daily News column he wrote after game 1. Dave Johnson probably left Gooden in too long in game 4. Bobby Ojeda was injured in a chainsaw accident in September and couldn't pitch.
The Dodgers had a lot of injuries by the World Series but lots of substitutes came through.