Posted on 02/26/2011 2:07:04 PM PST by mbeaven
Haven’t seen that all on my side. I have coached 3 of my kids and it has been mostly dads.
>>In 10-20 years watch lacrosse cut into soccer big time in the U.S. It’s faster moving, far more exciting and has a lot more scoring.
And it has contact and requires opposable thumbs!
I’m a big proponent of lacrosse over soccer. It has caught on big in the ATL-area.
...And another newbie idiot makes himself known on FR. Here’s a new phrase for you to learn sweetie - “anecdotal evidence”.
We are in the Atlanta area and it got here too late for my older boys, they played football and basketball but my middle son did join an indoor lacrosse club team. OMG! What a blast!
Baseball and cricket and other folk games of that ilk all derive from BRITISH pastimes that usually formed the main attraction when villages or isolated communities would come together, interact, eat, drink and be merry. Winning the game was just the icing on the cake of a genial social outing.
I think I’ve got a solution: you claim modern pro baseball as an American invention.
Us Brits will hang onto all the modest, plain, slow, traditional, self-regulating, amicable, HONEST amateur sports that modern pro baseball evolved from.
You know what’s really sucked the machismo out of soccer? Paying someone a million quid to prance around in shorts, distract them off the pitch with celebrity endorsements and the like, treating them with kid gloves and pandering to their every little diva whim, and tightening up the contact rules to ensure that those poor little darlings don’t hurt themselves because we don’t want them put out of commission by nasty tackles.
The worst ones for this are the Italians and Spanish soccer players.
Because of that, every little wannabe in school who wants to be a professional, acts like a ruddy diva, and little diva’s parents complain that their darling needs protecting from risk. Boom, there’s your stupid risk assessments and stupid cotton-wool wrapping, right there.
You want to know what real soccer should be played like, I have two words for you. Vinnie Jones.
That's cool. I used to think like you too.
No worries...
To the contrary. I have watched too many. Way too many.
Now, now - be fair! Part of that is down to you not appreciating what's happening on the pitch unless it's the bit when a ball gets punted between the posts. Plenty of people have similar attitudes to American Football.
That said, there are a lot of really REALLY boring soccer matches, and they're the ones where the divas are on the pitch, for example taking it easy because they only need a nil-nil draw to win on aggregate and they've got a more important game two days later.
I've never been a fan of premiership soccer for that reason but every now and again a team starts playing from the heart, as they should be doing, and that's when the game comes alive. The minnow leagues are generally like that all the time but you see that spirit in the African teams, and the Brazilians. Places where the game's still played for the sake of the game and the respect of your compatriots, not for fame and fortune.
Baseball vs. Soccer
You can get killed in baseball?
I guess that's why I like it so much more than soccer (futball).
5.56mm
What I mean by “no individual stands out” is that any flash of brilliance is quickly forgotten as all eyes follow the moving ball. No time to celebrate anything or any person.
No time for any spectators to pause and look at each other, and say, wow, what a play! Or what happened, I missed it, could you tell me what happened?
Instead everybody keeps looking at the soccer ball. The ball is supposedly exciting to watch, but rarely does it culminate in a goal, so the thrill soon wanes.
Soccer has little build-up for suspense, as players get ready for a goal-line stand, free throw with five seconds left, or full-count with bases loaded. The only sustained suspense in soccer comes with the rare penalty kick.
That's what I thought when I read the article. I played for 23 years, all my kids played at the club level, my ex played, we both coached and he ref'd. Your comment explaining what playing soccer really entails was excellent. Great sport, but not for everyone.....on or off the field.
Ah...
So, on one hand the pace of soccer is too slow with nothing going on, but on the other there’s “no time for spectators to pause...”
That only makes sense if you’re watching a match on TV because the camera invariably follows the ball and you don’t get to see what else is going on. So if nothing interesting is happening with the ball, the game looks boring.
It makes no sense at all if you’re a spectator at a live soccer match. If all you are able to do as a spectator is comment on the goals and particular plays, you might as well just be sat on your comfy chair at home, watching the highlights, and have the benefit of being able to pause or slo-mo the action if it’s all a bit too fast to follow.
If our goalie sparked up a cigarette while our forwards were one-twoing the ball in the other half of the pitch, we’d notice. And in the space of five minutes, hundreds of our guys would be singing a brand new insult or song created on the fly, purely to delight or annoy the opponents’ spectators. And we could do that without losing focus on the run of play, or letting our oxtail soups go cold.
There’s plenty of time for a “Wow, what a play!” comment. You get a good 15 second window which is more than sufficient. If it was such a good play that it deserves to be praised to death, then we would create a chant to celebrate the player, and sing that as the opponents are charging up the pitch. Goal celebrations are best left to the players themselves, and there are some hilarious routines.
Think of it like driving; if you’re only capable of looking at the road immediately in front of you, you lack basic awareness skills. It’s the same with being a soccer spectator. We don’t have dedicated cheerleaders in soccer, because the spectators ARE the cheerleaders.
With a 0-0 tie, the game is ALWAYS too slow. Everything is futility. Hopes are always dashed. The game is a fraud.
The more intelligent spectators get desperate. They think OK, well, let’s at least enjoy the little things. Let’s pause to enjoy the memory of a semi-interesting header. But they can’t even do that. You say 15 seconds? The ball moves a lot more quickly than that, and I dare say that most fans are watching the ball even during the 15 seconds.
There’s no chance for your friends to help you celebrate your son’s first decent head shot since he fell out the crib as an infant.
Just as important — there’s rarely any build-up of tension in soccer. A corner kick swooping over the goal might seem tense, but rarely does it produce a score. Tiebreakers or penalty shootouts come only after an exhausting regular time and overtime periods with no scores.
And this weekend, he broke his collar bone playing rugby.
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