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.
To some level yes, but not necessarily in the way you’re thinking. I don’t see it as a single game event. After all teams play many games in a season, and success is really a cumulative thing.
I think the “luckiest” thing for a team is injuries.
I remember SAF saying some time back, for the 98/99 year, when Man U won the treble, they were very lucky with injuries. I think only Henning Berg suffered any type of medium/long term injury, or something like that. Which meant they were able to have a full squad selection for almost the entire year.
I’ve seen some fans argue that if Arsenal didn’t suffer injuries toward the end of the season they would have won the PL. While I would say it is debatable that without injuries they definitely would have won, but, it most certainly would have increased the likelihood, especially considering they were top until the final few weeks.