My interest in the thread(s) is precisely to generalize the situation, which I have called, above, as Situation 3. This is because I originally posted Situation 3 as a pet peeve of mine, since that was the OP kick off. So there is no mistake, Situation 3, as defined by me, is not to play for a draw. It is to not meaningfully play, thereby achieving a 0-0 draw as an entropic fallout in a game both teams consider meaningless since they will advance anyway. After I posted, this particular game came up. Some have described the game as a potential Situation 3. So, here's my pet peeve (even if just a tiny slice of my experience with youth soccer), with a chance to see what people post as justifications. That's my interest. Call it narrow if you will.
I think I pretty much have everything I can glean from this. But I will probe one more time on the ethical thing about player safety. Dallas in the summer (if I have it right this was in Dallas) can be hot and humid (although try Houston). Perhaps in this game a player collapsed of heat stroke early on in the match, I don't know, could affect how both teams viewed things, although there would be other ways to handle it. In my mind I'm going yeah that's a larger ethical concern than my pet peeve. But I'm also thinking, hey, my kid's team has played 100 F plus with high humidity more than once and not performed a Situation 3 spectacle. Some hypothetical litmus tests also come to mind. Like, say this team needed the three points out of the final game would they have done the same thing or suddenly rolled out their A game? Also, if the weather did not change, would the team continue to play in a similarly lackluster fashion in the KOs? Real ethical concern or rationalization, that's what I'm driving at here. The stuff about there being more scouts in the KOs, this being a national title and all that, that just seems fatuous to me in terms of the larger issues. The scouts could be as thick as flies on buffalo hide, all grumpy and sweating with their little notebooks as far as I'm concerned and it would not change my view of it. Sorry.
By the time our kiddos crank out grand-kiddos the average heat stress during a match will almost certainly have increased substantially. Gaming associations need to find a meaningful way to to deal with that. As I see it, tournament organizers do not have the necessary incentive. So going forward, I think referee associations will need to be or feel empowered to say, nope, not right now, not safe for the players. That is important and could prevent, how to say it delicately, "ad-hoc solutions".