Posted on 11/25/2020 10:52:55 AM PST by Obadiah
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — Diego Maradona, the Argentine soccer great who scored the “Hand of God” goal in 1986 and led his country to that year's World Cup title before later struggling with cocaine use and obesity, has died. He was 60.
A person close to Maradona said he died Wednesday of a heart attack. The person spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly.
Maradona died two weeks after being released from a Buenos Aires hospital following brain surgery.
(Excerpt) Read more at stltoday.com ...
Soccer, aka REAL football is also the sport of choice for most of the developed world outside of the US. Enjoy your boring-ass gridiron with kneeling players and constant commercial breaks.
Soccer, the sport of the third world.
Right, because the National Felons League playing a knockoff of rugby (when they're not kneeling) is so much better...
RIP.
I've vacationed in Honduras many times and soccer is the only sport available to the kids in the villages outside the two major cities......
My brother-in-law is from Honduras and his nephew was asked to play for the national team back in the 1980's but turned them down because he was in medical school.
On one trip, my brother-in-law took us out to the country side and showed us a sugar cane plantation that had brick dormitories that housed the workers and their families that worked for the sugar distributors who supplied the workers to harvest the sugar cane. They were migrant workers who were transported from one plantation to the next during harvest season.
Next to this one complex there were little kids playing soccer in a field of trampled down weeds in their bare feet.........
Cricket is also growing as well, especially with all the Indians coming here.
And having become a Cricket fan in the last few years, I think being a good Cricket batsman takes more skill than a baseball player, because you have to basically last an hour without making a single mistake. Imagine telling a baseball player he has to go an hour without taking a strike or hitting into an out. That’s what a cricket player has to do if he wants to get enough runs.
I was hoping it was someone else.
;-)
Soccer is the sport of all nations, other than the USA. It is this way because Soccer is the cheapest sport to ‘fund’ if you want to call it that. Any kids can get a soccer game going in any open space, all they need is a ball. They don’t even need shoes to play it.
In the USA, a fully developed, technologically advanced society with opportunities, many, many other sports were allowed to flourish because people had money to fund them. Baseball, Football, Lacross, Basketball all require gear and uniforms etc... This is the reason Soccer is held in such high esteem around the globe, in part because they think it’s an FU to America, like every other decision foreign countries make, and in another part, because they pump all available sporting funds into a ‘National Soccer Team’.
“Soccer, the sport of the third world.”
Oh, please! I guess Europe is the third world. That’s where it started, that’s where it’s the number one sport, and the rest of the world including the third world has taken a liking to it.
Soccer is not a beautiful sport. Games can end in a tie, Americans hate that. We want winners and losers. Soccer is the perfect game for leftists.
But note that the countries with the biggest populations: China, India, USA, Indonesia, all suck at it. Of the 5 most populous countries on the planet, only Brazil is good at soccer.
If that long ball gets caught, or you swing and miss and the ball hits the wickets, you're out and you go sit in the stands, never to bat again for the entire match.
That's why in cricket you see the batter use the flat bat as a defensive shield so that the ball doesn't hit the wicket, and will only have a productive swing at the ball if the ball can be hit on the ground, as a line drive, or in the rare case, can be sized up to actually hit the "home run".
I did hear that in the Dominican Republic where baseball is king, they have a form of "cricket" where the batter is out if the pitcher can hit a piece of metal that is situated behind the batter. That's why Vlad Guerrero was so good at hitting baseballs that were thrown way outside the strike zone.
Good analysis.
There’s something to be said for the fact that soccer is a sport most Americans OUTGROW.
I can't think of any kid who I knew even giving America a thought when playing "soccer".
Only an hour? That's hardly anything, unless it's a T20 game. For full-length games (4 or 5 days), a good batsman looks to last at least a full session (2 hours plus), preferably a whole day's play (c. 8 hours with breaks, sometimes more.) Incidentally, it's 'batter' only in Australia. More or less everywhere else it's 'batsman'. A batter is a wet mixture of eggs, flour and milk or water.
Only good commie is a dead commie.
Soccer is Devilball
I hate it, all real Americans hate it.
Soccer is also the #1 sport here in the U.S. — for little children and their overbearing Karen mothers, that is.
There’s something to be said for the fact that soccer is a sport most Americans OUTGROW.
Not really. Americans play at the biggest clubs in Europe now. Christian Pulisic at Chelsea in England. Weston McKennie with Ronaldo at Juventus in Italy. An American scored for Barcelona in Champions league yesterday. There is an an American playing for Bayern (champions of Europe last year) in Champions league as I type this. Etc., etc.
Ok,ok, I’m still learning the lingo.
We have individual talent, the thing is getting them to play together as a team.
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