Posted on 06/14/2019 3:52:38 AM PDT by C19fan
Much to the chagrin and disdain of many my good American colleagues at this publication, I am a soccer fan. I love the beautiful game, its mesmerizing stars like Lionel Messi and Cristiano Renaldo. I appreciate the tactics, and even the ties, ties, ties. So this week I decided to give the women’s World Cup a try. I regret to inform you good readers that it is awful, and bordering on unwatchable. At first I couldn’t quite tell what the problem was. There were 22 people kicking a ball around with exceptional skill, tight triangle passing, counter attacks, everything I usually look for in a good fixture. So why was I bored out of my mind watching these games I tried to endure?
(Excerpt) Read more at thefederalist.com ...
Fox Sports has the men and women World Cup broadcast rights so yeah it is every Fox related channel on board pumping it.
Soccer should eliminate offside rule. It would make it much more dynamic game and fun to watch.
I could have saved him the time and effort and told him that up front.
He then goes on to make the same criticism of MLS soccer in the U.S. The men's game in the U.S. isn't (yet) up to the top European standards.
I could have told him that up front as well.
So basically, Marcus is simply announcing that he is a soccer snob. He enjoys only the very elite play in the very best men's leagues. Ok, that's a reasonable viewing preference. But he's writing off 99.99 percent of soccer, and 100 percent of women's sports, as unworthy of his attention.
When he tries to turn this into a concrete criticism of the play in the Women's World Cup, he sounds foolish. He says he doesn't see the women play with the same blazing speed as the men? So what? In a game situation, speed is relative. The fastest women players have the same advantage over their peers in their games as do the fastest men in theirs. If he's never seen one of the top women strikers explode to the ball, split a seam, and score on a breakaway … well, he's not watched enough women's soccer to know what he's talking about.
I just hope we don't have to watch the French strikers doing this to the U.S. defense in a couple of weeks, because France has the speed to do it. But Marcus will miss it. He'll be too busy watching Messi reruns.
As to the lack of parity, as evidenced by the U.S.'s 13-0 win … I don't know what the record is in the men's World Cup; perhaps someone who knows his way around the stats can find that. A quick google search did turn up one game, during 2012 World Cup qualifying, in which Australia beat American Samoa 31-0, with Australia's top scorer, Archie Thompson, scoring 13 goals himself. That was in qualifying, not the tournament itself, but that's incidental.
The point here is striking a balance in a championship tournament between inclusiveness and competitive balance. The NCAA men's basketball tournament has grown too big for my liking; at this point, it would be better just to let everyone play in an open, unrestricted tournament. It would add a week to the tournament; just shorten the overgrown regular season by a week to compensate. (Get rid of the conference tournaments, which would no longer be relevant as a selection device for the NCAA's.) There would be some truly ugly first and second round massacres, but that's ok. I grew up in Indiana back before Indiana high school basketball was ruined by a class structure for the state tournament. The tournament used to be open, and the little schools enjoyed their crack at the big guys. They knew they weren't going to win … but there was always the Milan Miracle to remember, and every year, a couple of little rural schools would upset their big county seat rival, which made it all worthwhile.
In women's soccer, the dividing line is between countries and regions that have strong professional leagues vs. those who don't. The amateurs will rarely beat the pros. The very best young athletes can play college soccer somewhere, and the U.S. is a training ground through college for many of the rising stars in Latin America, Africa and Asia. (You might have noticed Alex Morgan consoling a young Thai player after the match; the Thai girl was, like Morgan, a Cal Berkley grad, so there was some alma mater stuff going on.) The good European and Asian countries have developed strong leagues. But elsewhere the strong players don't have anywhere to develop, or even to play regularly and stay in training, after college.
I don't have a problem with a tournament leaning towards inclusiveness, even though it will produce some mismatches. The Thailand soccer federation will go home with a very clear idea of the gap it faces, and they will know exactly what they have to do to make up ground. There's nothing wrong with that. And if you asked them if they want to participate next time around, or would rather stay home rather than risk getting blown out by the big guys … I think you know how they'd answer.
Oops. The 31-0 men’s score was 2002, not 2012.
Totally agree. This is sub par amateur hour play. Here is what they don’t tell you when they’re hyping me this garbage - https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-4389760/USA-women-s-team-suffer-5-2-loss-FC-Dallas-U-15-boys.html
The great team USA was convincingly outplayed by a 15 year old squad from high school. That tells you all you need to know about the skill level of women’s soccer. This is the big secret that they don’t want you to know. It gets better ratings this way.
There’s also a men’s world cup cricket underway in England that’s getting even less attention in the US than women’s soccer.
But women’s soccer is unwatchable. It’s skill-less and boring. They can’t pass, trap or head worth a damn. And they got beat by a high school boys team? That sums it up.
Add in a pole dancing competition at halftime and the NFL would be in jeopardy.
My girls don’t play sports. Female athletes are not attractive to men, and at some point I want them out of the house.
My girls don’t play sports. Female athletes are not attractive to men, and at some point I want them out of the house.
I’m sorry but soccer is basically unwatchable.
“He’s going to get shredded for his comments.
Which means, of course, that he’s right.”
For politically correct reasons, no one wants to criticize women’s soccer. That’s why so much of the American media are defending the USA soccer team fo running up the score against Thailand and acting like a bunch of jerks in doing so. The “goals count” excuse is weak. There is virtually no chance that the USA team will be eliminated from competition on the basis of total goals, and they know it.
Now that's a good idea......
It’s not just the physically demanding sports, how many people know chess tournaments for women are held separately from men’s and that there is a women’s world chess champion ?
Well played soccer is fun both to play and to watch. Not well played soccer is tedious, again both playing and watching, coaching. I don't know if he's right though about speed. If you play smart, you don't necessarily have to be very fast. Gosh knows I was never fast, but I played smart, was equally adept (ie. what skill level I had) both left and right footed, and on defense I could usually figure out how to get in the way of the offense and break up any play - even without startling speed.
You mean watching kick ball is boring???
And even that is partially due to the short little skirts they wear.
I think it depends on the sport. My husband told me that in college the guys in the weight room would get in line for the squat rack when a sprinter from the woman’s track team was using it ;-). Don’t think they did that for the softball players.
Maybe it’s the uniforms; mannish uniforms could bring about more mannish mannerisms. The bun huggers we wore in college were not mannish at all, neither were any of my teammates.
This is the reason for the lack of interest. Anyone who can't see this is living in denial. These women killed their success and their careers with this political BS. They represent the commie left and that is not going to sell in the US. This womens team has turned womens soccer into the sports version of liberal talk radio. Nobody wants to pay money to hear it and nobody wants to pay money to watch it. Hope they enjoy their irrelevance.
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