Why does a ‘draw’ sometimes feel like a win?

(CNN) — Through two rounds of the World Cup’s group stage, the tiny nation of Cape Verde has displayed the jubilant air of a winner. In its first-ever World Cup appearance, the team — hailing from an archipelago off the western coast of Africa with around 530,000 inhabitants — has left its fans giddy with success and its opponents, from the traditional powers of Spain and Uruguay, trudging off the field in shock.

Spain, the pre-tournament World Cup favorite, took a total of 27 shots against Cape Verde in 90 minutes, seven of them on target. Statistically, that barrage should have produced at least two goals. But the ball never made it past Cape Verde’s defense and its star goalkeeper Vozinha.

Six days after that stunning result, Cape Verde did it again, erasing a 2–1 lead by Uruguay, the original World Cup champion, and further boosting its chances of advancing.

The actual scores of Cape Verde’s games were less victorious: 0–0 against Spain, and 2–2 against Uruguay. Both matches ended in a “draw”: an outcome with no outright winner.

So far in this World Cup, draws have been more frequent than usual. Of the 48 matches played in the first two rounds of the group stage, 14 have ended with neither side managing to score more than the other — and in some cases, with the teams failing to score at all.

The lack of an official winner, even a lack of goals scored, doesn’t necessarily make for a less exciting watch. Last week’s match between the Netherlands and Japan, which ended 2-2, was hailed by commentators as an “instant classic.” Though Curaçao, a Caribbean island nation of about 158,000 people, couldn’t score in Sunday’s game against Ecuador, goalkeeper Eloy Room’s record-tying 15 saves in a scoreless draw had fans dancing in the streets.

And Iran, which has never made it out of the group stage, finds itself within striking distance of advancing, thanks to its own 0–0 and 2–2 draws against Belgium and New Zealand, respectively. A third draw, in its final group-stage game against Egypt, might be enough to do it.

“Nil-nil, especially if the power differential between the teams is strong, can be a very thrilling game,” says Philipp Gollner, a historian at Goshen College and host of the podcast “The Assistant Professor of Football.” “And in return, in every sport, there’s some really boring wins.”

While “draw” — from the Old English verb “dragan,” meaning to pull or drag — has myriad meanings in the English language, it’s unclear how or why it came to refer to a contest without a clear winner. John Kelly, a former dictionary editor and author of the etymology blog Mashed Radish, suggests that “draw” might be short for “withdraw,” possibly referring to battles in which one side withdraws.

The Oxford English Dictionary finds the word first recorded in the competitive sense in 1610, in a letter from English diplomat Dudley Carleton characterizing a parliamentary debate as a “drawn match”: “It concluded, as it is many times in a cock pit, with a drawn match; for nothing was in the end put to the question.” A similar variant, “draw game,” appears in a French-English dictionary in 1699.

The earliest citation for “draw” as a noun comes in an 1823 sports slang dictionary: “A draw in backgammon or draughts, is the final state of the game when neither party can win.” By the 1870s, Kelly notes, the word had become common.

The word “tie,” more commonly used in North America, has been used to describe an equal outcome in a contest since at least 1680, and Kelly says it’s not clear whether “draw” or “tie” came first. (Though “draw” and “tie” are generally synonymous in most sports, the two are distinct in cricket: A “tie” refers to an equal score after both teams have completed their innings, and a “draw” is declared when time runs out before both teams have completed their innings.)

Draws are a foundational part of the modern game of soccer. The first official soccer game, played between Barnes FC and Richmond FC in London on December 19, 1863, ended in a 0–0 draw, as did the first international match between England and Scotland on November 30, 1872.

Unlike high-scoring sports such as basketball, in which games end with a decisive winner, soccer has historically respected, and even rewarded, equal outcomes. Before 1981, the English Premier League and other professional leagues and competitions awarded teams two points in the standings for a win, one point for a draw and no points for a loss. As the game evolved to incentivize more attacking play, wins were made more valuable and upgraded to three points. Draws continue to be worth one point in most global competitions and professional leagues today.

In the World Cup, the two teams that amass the most points in each group advance to the single-elimination stage. There, by definition, each match has to have a winner and a loser, so any match that ends in a draw proceeds to two 15-minute periods of overtime, and, if that fails to untie the score, a penalty kick shootout.

But in the group stage of the competition, Gollner says awarding a point for a tie acknowledges the effort inherent in staving off defeat. “Imagine you’re playing a kind of a fortress, a team that never gives away any point at home, and you go there and you battle them to nil-nil,” he says. “That ought to count for something.”

A draw can feel like a win or a loss, depending on the team. Sam Mewis, a former midfielder for the US Women’s National Team and the host of the podcast “The Women’s Game,” says that when she was playing for the national team, a draw was a disappointment. “We were supposed to be the best team in the world,” she says. “We expected to win every game. We wanted to win every game.”

Club soccer, Mewis says, was different. Over the course of a season, many factors — long travel days, inclement weather, injuries — could affect a team’s performance at any given game. In certain cases, she says a draw could feel hard-fought, while walking away with one point was better than no points at all. Still, she adds, for the top teams and players, a draw might as well be a loss: “Unless you’re really an underdog fighting away from home against all odds, most players are too competitive to think a draw is a win.”

Why are there so many draws in this World Cup? Gollner says that recent matchups have likely felt more competitive because soccer cultures across the globe are becoming more similar. The national teams of many smaller countries have players who were trained in international soccer academies or who compete at the club level in Europe’s Big Five. At the same time, he says coaches now emphasize defensive tactics such as pressing and close formation. “Even if you don’t have a brilliant offense, and if you don’t have a Messi, you can still try to close shop in the back,” he adds.

However exhilarating seasoned soccer fans might find some recent World Cup draws, newcomers to the sport might prove harder to convince. Mewis shared that her heating technician recently complained that he didn’t see the point in a 90-minute game that ended 0–0. An even sports outcome is so disdained in American culture that there’s an idiom for it: “A tie is like kissing your sister.”

But when it comes to “the beautiful game,” there’s more to the experience than the final score. “People who are maybe just tuning into the World Cup for the first time are realizing that there is so much to watch, even in a 0-0 game,” Mewis says. “There’s so many crazy things that can still happen.”

To Gollner, embracing the draw offers a larger lesson beyond soccer. “Not every encounter in life is decided with a winner or a loser,” he says. “Sometimes there’s a compromise that both sides have to live with.”

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