I'm grateful for your participation (all but three players completed the evaluation!) and for your overwhelmingly positive responses. As you can see, almost every single aspect of the organization was rated extremely highly and the comments were very enthusiastic in their majority. We also received a great deal of useful remarks and suggestions. I believe that this evaluation is very important, because nowadays that most people are not active on the forum we do not get any accurate impression on what participants thought of a world cup's organization, other than pats on the organizers' back which do not really help us improve.
I would like to address some of your comments to the best of my ability:
Number of games and overall format
• There could even be more games in the first day.
• I’d like to play more matches.
• I think on Sunday it would be possible to play more official games in the afternoon. It happens that in many world cups on Sunday we are just doing nothing or playing friendlies.
• On Sunday afternoon there were "dead times" there were no games.
• Silver cup as Gold Cup. Rounds after the league for Sunday because there was enough time on Sunday afternoon.
• Bronze cup final seemed quite off.
• I think it doesn't have much sense that the loser of the game of shame ends in best position than the winner and finalist of the bronze cup. Maybe the bronze final cup should be played for the players who ended in 7th place in the first day.
• There had to be the semifinals for Silver Cup and Bronze Cup.
Let me start by saying that nobody is a bigger advocate of more games than me. If it was up to me, we'd all be chained to our chairs for the weekend, connected to a tube for IV fluids and a catheter to avoid toilet breaks. But there were reasons for the way we did things in Athens, and I will try to explain them to you.
We used to play 2 legs on Saturday, and admittedly we had the time to do it this year, too. However, in previous world cups people used to nag incessantly about it, claiming back aches, tiredness, boredom etc. And that was back when the KOA was much more active and people played several local tournaments every month. So we had to cut back to a single leg Round 1. Therefore, although I would totally support an organizer's decision to switch back to 2, I sincerely doubt it is what people want.
The Bronze Cup final was not optimal, I totally agree. We were hoping to have enough people for a Bronze Cup group, it was stated in the rules that we weren't going to do it unless we had 38 players, even with 36 it could have been a possibility but not with 32. We had already bought the trophy and we thought that instead of scrapping it altogether, it would be better to let two players who finish at an arbitrary position play for it. If anything, I don't think it hurt.
Now, let me tell you that the plenitude of time on Sunday is an illusion. The past world cups speak for themselves; time has always been our enemy on the second day. In Athens, only one player left on Sunday, Ian, and even he departed quite late. Moreover, everyone followed the timeline and we didn't suffer from missing people. I like to think that the fact that we had a clearly and frequently communicated agenda contributed to that, but if I'm honest it's always about the people. Now, in previous years, we had:
-Players who did not join us on Sunday before 11:30.
-Players who did not come at all on Sunday - with or without bothering to inform us.
-Players who had to take an early flight, and left before finishing their games.
-Players who took 4-hour lunch breaks or simply disappeared for a long time.
As a result of the above, there were:
-Game of Shame played by other people than those who finished last (which is why I had it on Saturday).
-Bronze Cup finals played by other people than those who topped the BC group.
-Silver Cup finals played by other people than those who qualified.
-Severe problems with the format, software and general organization and even fights over the changes.
So, again, in KO2 World Cups time is an illusion. Just because you had enough time to play friendlies on Sunday does not guarantee that there was enough time for official games, because it just takes 1-2 people to screw up the timeline for the latter. In previous tournaments, we had too many people wait for too few to finish their games, which is why I minimized the classification matches; as a result, people played 2-4 games less than before, but it was one of the few times that the agenda was beautifully executed without delays.
Hardware issues
• Hardware issues on three of the play stations.
• Some locations not optimal Audio video defects.
• Amiga stations with TVs! I'm realistic about this point though as there is no way you can get so many Amiga monitors all in one place these days (especially if the next WC is in Malaga!). I've become a bit of a Amiga monitor snob despite growing up using a TV!
• Some TV screens were not good, too bright or too fuzzy.
• All workstations must equipped with monitors and Amiga.
I'm aware of all of these problems, and trust me, they hurt us more than they hurt you because it is our own equipment that broke down or under-performed. We did try our best to test them, but some even broke down on the day. In the end, we do the best we can with what we have available, and even made sure that we had enough backups so there was never an empty station. That's something to be expected with such old hardware. And I'm not sure anyone can guarantee a tournament room full of monitors instead of TVs.
Game of Shame
• I think the weaker part of all WC cups is the game of shame looser award perspective. It should be more honorary IMO.
• Maybe skip the Game of Shame in the future or change the format somehow.
• Game of shame should be played on Sensible Soccer.
• I worry whether anyone in the shirt of shame game actually enjoys that experience.
The Apron of Shame idea of which I was so proud ended up being the only organization feature that got a relatively low score. It seems that the GoS makes people awkward, and although it should be clear that nobody wants to offend anyone, I get that. It is also a matter of who gets the trophy; nowadays, there are rarely any actually bad players in competitions, just people with no standard goals in their quiver, so it doesn't really apply. I was at least hoping for one of Kostas Kakaletris or Antonis Trikas to wear the apron, as they both have a high sense of self sarcasm. In comparison, Manfred looks too much like a serious gentleman.
Let us put our heads together then and decide whether this should be changed entirely or scrapped altogether. I, for one, would like to see it stay as it is an institution that's been with us since day 1. I like the idea of the players competing in a different football game, maybe one even more obscure than Sensible Soccer that they will not know about before they sit down!
The Draw
• Maybe the draws could have been done on Friday to create more suspense.
• The fact that throughout the 2 days, I played with almost every Greek I've already played with a billion times.
• WC group draws should have locality restrictions, as it happens in most competitions.
• Some measure to not let too many people from the same country end up in the same group on the first day.
I certainly see the merit in having the draw on Friday. But we wouldn't have had such a rich presentation in a restaurant, and there's also the risk of people not showing up on Saturday (it happened).
Now, about country restrictions. I understand that it's a bummer when you go to a world cup and end up playing your neighbors. But I want you to do the math and consider whether there was really anything the organizers could have done about it. There were 10 Greeks for 4 groups, so the minimum limit we'd set would be 3 Greeks per group. We ended up having 4 in one group. Would it really have changed your experience that much if you had played against one less Greek, whom you'd probably need to face on Sunday anyway? If we have a World Cup with 16 people from one country, I'll be all for implementing a limit, but there really was no reason for one here.
Groups in the App
• In the application I would have liked to see the updated group rankings
• Updated group standings in the app Maybe.
Great idea, it's really up to Steve to create such a page. And speaking of Steve...
Camber's workload
• To be honest I was sad to see SteveC so busy. We definitely have to fix it.
• Find a way to keep Steve C less busy with support work.
• Dedicated livestream operator, even just a player with no other duties to worry about.
• To have a person (not necessary an external but he could be a player) caring about the broadcasting aspect.
It touches my heart that so many people care about our friend. You do understand though that for what you suggest to happen, one needs to step up and volunteer to help? So how about it?
Unbalanced groups?
• In this WC we had unbalanced groups all the way through, as, due to covid, the rankings did not correspond to the level of the players. The results of the 2nd round show this clearly. Perhaps this could be fixed in the future with a preparatory round of games that add to the rankings, before the group sections. This could render useless the friendlies session, at no time impact for the tournament.
I'm scratching my head with this comment. I am looking at the groups and see no unbalance whatsoever. In fact, this was one of the most successful seeding work we've ever had, with 15 our of the top 16 seeded players making it to the next round. Seeding groups are much harder and complex than you think. What exactly will the preparatory round tell you? Take people like Steve Camber, for instance. He finished 1st in his Day 1 Group and then was out of the quarter finals. So he was a 2nd seed who performed like a 1st seed on Saturday and like a 3rd seed on Sunday. And we have people like that every year. In the Silver Cup groups, it's even worse, because there are less goals. People can play a Silver Cup every week and end up with very different results every time.
Social media
• IMO if we want this to continue for another 10 years we must attract wider interest. Social media activation for instance not in closed groups.
Well said, I totally agree with this comment. I've been thinking that a Facebook Group is not optimal for what we need because people cannot start posts there. Perhaps we should migrate to a Facebook page instead.
