About seven years ago, I scored the goal that won the league championship for my team when a midfielder fired a fast diagonal pass on the ground toward the right corner of the 18-yard box. There wasn’t much time left and the grass was wet, so instead of cutting left inside the last defender, which would have allowed me to have the first crack at the ball at the cost of a difficult first touch that would also bring me closer to the other defenders, I just ran toward where the ball would be if the defender didn’t manage to block it and hoped that he would miss it, knowing that the wet grass was going to make the ball slide faster than normal. He slid to intercept it, as I knew he would, but he didn’t quite manage to get a foot on the ball, (or on me, since I jumped as he slid to avoid getting taken out) which left me one-on-one with the goalie. The goalie was already coming out and moving to right, so I simply hit a low shot to the left with my first touch. Goal. Game. Championship.

When you don’t play the miss, you’re usually not in a position to take advantage of it when it happens. This is why you should always utilize hopium rather than deride it, even though you know perfectly well how low the percentages are. Because even if the percentages of a miss are low, the percentages of scoring when there is a miss are very, very high.