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Although I am a soccer fan and have a kid that plays I will be the first to admit that soccer is not the safest of sports. At the level my kid plays now every kid on the field knows how to take an opponent down. It is not unusual for a kid to be“red carded” as in kicked out, of a game for flagrant rule violations.
In one particular nasty game this year there were two broken legs, a broken jaw, and a broken arm. The center ref, a good friend, finally stopped the game to talk to the coaches and players from both teams.
It was a couple of cheap shots from the other team that caused one of our players to sustain a badly broken leg that started it but that really didn't matter. It turned into an all out war and our kids ended up just as guilty. Except for the first broken leg all of the other injuries were incurred by the opposing team. I went down and told our coach to bench my son because of the way he was playing. He was up to his eyeballs in the mess. Our coach lectured them and ran them 5 miles a day for a week instead of practicing. There is a tremendous amount of passion on a soccer field. The parents on the sidelines can actually be worse than little league parents and that is saying something.