You’re all narrative merchants who want to attribute essentially random events to something more solid, as you think the sport you love is somehow devalued if you admit it wasn’t all destiny and that if the ball had bounced 10cm in the other direction one time, a team in blue would be lifting a trophy instead of a team in red.
So even when team A batters team B, hits the post eight times and then concedes a last minute deflected winner, they weren’t unlucky, but Team B had a better mentality, or Team A’s manager always bottles things in Europe so this was inevitable, or it was actually the genius of dropping player X into a false 9 rather than playing a traditional striker that made the difference.
The fact the best team doesn’t always win is what makes football interesting. Winning any big cup competition requires being both really good and really lucky. People should embrace that.
Sorry I don’t agree, epitome of luck would imply there’s no difference between a FK specialist and your 4th string right back taking the shot. Also, what about that season where Dmitri Payet was scoring a stupid amount of direct free kicks? I wouldn’t call that luck or even mostly luck.
I think you and most others just don’t seem to grasp that something can both be lucky and skullful at the same time. The best players will always win in poker long term but they’re capable of acknowledging that when they go on a hot streak that they got lucky. Skill put them in that position but it required a lot of luck to win a tournament.
Payet’s skill at FK enabled him to score a lot of free kicks but at the same time it required a lot of luck that he was able to hit the target more often than his skill would suggest and that the keeper didn’t save it often enough.