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Statistics

In sports in general they are used with more force every day, in this era where technological tools allow it, numbers dominate any sports scene and in a cold but precise way, they give a very approximate idea of performance at the team level and also individually.

I don't know if that's right or wrong, these are the new times, and although there are sports where statistics were created many years ago, like baseball for example, almost none of them escape counting and accurate scoring for use in search of perfection. which of course is unattainable.

In motorsports, these measurements go very far, to levels unsuspected in previous years; checks, measurements, and even some adaptations of various types such as engine performance can be done remotely from the control sector of each team in full development of a competition.

I have lived for years where everything depended on the driver and where the mechanics of a team had to work all night to make an engine change, for example, I lean towards that, some say that today the driver represents only 10% of the I work on the triumph of a career, inconceivable as a sport according to my way of seeing things, of course, it is romanticism and perhaps according to many psychologists, attachment to the years of youth.

However, I wanted to refer to a particular statistic that I saw a couple of days ago and on which I tried to make some comments because it surprised me, even in these times where everything is measured, it took me surprise, it can be said.

With the goal that Lionel Messi converted for Australia one minute and a few seconds into the friendly match played a few days ago and which was the fastest conversion in his entire sports career, a statistic was published that I did not know and surely most neither do those reading this.

The great player has scored goals in every minute of the games he played, with the exception of minute 1 and until that day minute 2, that is to say, if we make a table from minute 1 to minute 90, he has all the covered lockers, except the one at minute 1. Curious and surprising.

Those are international numbers of course, for local consumption, that day Messi also broke a local record converting for 7th. consecutive time with the national team jersey, 10 goals in those 7 games with which he left behind the mark established by René Pontoni 78 years ago.

I don't know if he has any record left to break, indeed if one is to score a goal in minute 1 to fill the 90 boxes, that, unlike what is customary to mention that records were created to be broken, not It can be surpassed by no one, at most equaled, unless, of course, the regulations are modified and the matches extend beyond that time, something difficult to think about.

Statistics are fun and helpful, there is no doubt about it, although perhaps they are getting out of hand, at least in terms of sports because if we continue on this path and now even more so with artificial intelligence, we may lose the essence of this activity that is one of the most beautiful of the creations of the human being.