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You're judging it on the outcome level, which is fair I guess - the soccer one probably had a better outcome for fairness. Although these days with live telecas

You're judging it on the outcome level, which is fair I guess - the soccer one probably had a better outcome for fairness. Although these days with live telecasts and such, you could probably still cheat in a similar manner with knowledge of how the other game is going. Considering the number of people involved in the cheating though, it seems to me that the Austria/Germany one is much worse? Two entire squads, or at least the 11 players + substitutes unanimously agreed to cheat; whereas in the China badminton case it was a couple of players and presumably at most four or five coaches and selectors above them.

smcl 4y ago
I don't think there's any objective way to say whether one is worse than the other, so this totally boils down to what parts of the respective scandals annoy any one person the most. That said, I'm not 100% convinced the number of people involved (22 players + some coaches vs 2 players + coaches) contributes either way to badness. But now that you mention outcome, I'm thinking again from the perspective of the Algerian team rather than the sport itself. They could've been the first African nation to make it out of the group stages of the world cup but were denied it by a third party, whereas I suppose at least in the Badminton case the player had some kind of agency (even if it was unlikely they'd choose not to obey the instruction to throw the game). So I'm coming around to the idea that Austria/Germany was actually worse :D To add a lukewarm ending to the tale, Algeria eventually managed to make it out of the World Cup group stages in Brazil in 2014. Unfortunately they faced an in-form Germany and lost 2-1 after extra time. Germany would go on to win the competition, completely destroying Brazil 7-1 on the way, so Algeria maybe don't feel so hard done by that time.
- quadrifoliate 4y ago
  I did not see that dimension of it at all; but is interesting now that you point it out. Thank you for having one of the better arguments/discussions on this site – the ones where, by the end, I'm mostly going "Hmm...".

smcl 4y ago

I don't think there's any objective way to say whether one is worse than the other, so this totally boils down to what parts of the respective scandals annoy any one person the most. That said, I'm not 100% convinced the number of people involved (22 players + some coaches vs 2 players + coaches) contributes either way to badness. But now that you mention outcome, I'm thinking again from the perspective of the Algerian team rather than the sport itself. They could've been the first African nation to make it out of the group stages of the world cup but were denied it by a third party, whereas I suppose at least in the Badminton case the player had some kind of agency (even if it was unlikely they'd choose not to obey the instruction to throw the game). So I'm coming around to the idea that Austria/Germany was actually worse :D To add a lukewarm ending to the tale, Algeria eventually managed to make it out of the World Cup group stages in Brazil in 2014. Unfortunately they faced an in-form Germany and lost 2-1 after extra time. Germany would go on to win the competition, completely destroying Brazil 7-1 on the way, so Algeria maybe don't feel so hard done by that time.

quadrifoliate 4y ago
I did not see that dimension of it at all; but is interesting now that you point it out. Thank you for having one of the better arguments/discussions on this site – the ones where, by the end, I'm mostly going "Hmm...".