> It sounds an awful lot like a couple of football teams collaborating at a particular stage of a tournament because it will ultimately improve their members' c

> It sounds an awful lot like a couple of football teams collaborating at a particular stage of a tournament because it will ultimately improve their members' chances of success later in the tournament. Yes, if you completely ignore the point I made about collusion invariably meaning the matches themselves cease to be competitive (whereas a cycling race with riders sacrificing themselves for teammates' benefit and all kinds of tactical shenanigans between teams absolutely does have multiple participants willing and able to take all the points off any rider that isn't trying to win), and ignore the much closer cycling analogy (a race where one side doesn't race) you snipped off the end of the sentence. With sufficient willingness to dismiss relevant context, you can make pretty much anything sound like pretty much anything else. I don't think the Disgrace of Gijon and your average cycle race with multiple teams jostling for position looked equally competitive to sports fans or felt equally intensely competitive to the participants, and I don't think any cycling fan that enjoys the anticipation of seeing when riders will stop conserving their energy in the early part of the race and who the tactics will favour would feel the same way about a team deliberately losing a head-to-head pursuit race for the sake of future matchups ... Fans aren't objecting to strategy, they're objecting to the lack of any competitiveness or skill involved in a head to head contest where sides collude or one side intentionally throws. (This particular game's a little different from two teams actually colluding and was probably amusingly crazy for the last three minutes, but still, there's not much skill in scoring unopposed in your own net)