Posted on 07/02/2014 9:55:48 AM PDT by PoloSec
I’m a sports fanatic. I love almost every sport.
I’ve tried to get interested in soccer. I just can’t.
Soccer is about as exciting as watching paint dry.
There’s almost no scoring in soccer. Too many games end 0-0 and 1-0.
Hours can go buy with barely a shot on goal – when no one even comes close to scoring.
I think there’s too much scoring in NBA basketball. But I’d rather have too much scoring than no scoring.
If this sport is ever to catch on in America, soccer needs to make adjustments to make the game more exciting to watch.
Adjustment #1: Dramatically shrink the size of the field.
Make the field about half the size it is now.
This will help increase the action in front of the goal.
Adjustment #2: Increase the size of the goal.
An increase in the width of six inches or so would probably be enough.
Adjustment #3: Put sideboards up around the field so the ball doesn’t go out of bounds so much.
Indoor soccer has this feature. Indoor soccer is much more fun to watch than outdoor soccer.
Passes that carom off the walls make the passing more complicated and interesting, like hockey.
Adjustment #4: Allow hitting in soccer, like in ice hockey and lacrosse.
Soccer need not make all these changes at once.
Try one or two changes at a time and see what happens.
People want to see goals. And people like to see hitting.
The National Football League is constantly tweaking the rules to make the game more exciting.
If the NFL never changed the rules, there would be no scoring because defense always catches up to the offense. Almost all the rule changes favor the offense.
Even the football itself has changed shape over the years to enhance the passing game.
Baseball created more home runs by bringing in the fences. Basketball created more scoring by adding a shot clock. Boxing created more action by making the ring smaller.
But boxing is being overtaken in popularity by martial arts caging fight because there’s a lot more action, a lot more actual fighting.
All other sports that I can think of constantly review and change the rules – to make their sports more exciting to watch.
Why can’t soccer make adjustments?
There is no sport that I can think of that is more boring than soccer.
Even golf is more exciting.
There are tense moments in golf, such as when Phil Mickelson is trying to sink a five-foot putt to win the Masters.
Baseball is slow. But it gets tense when the bases are loaded in a close playoff game if your team is involved. The tension in golf and baseball is created by the situation.
But there are few situations in soccer that create any tension because so much of the action takes place so far from the goal.
Is there strategy in soccer? I assume there is, but I can’t discern it.
It’s obvious there’s strategy in baseball and football. The fans can see it. The fans can question the strategy.
The fans can boo if the football coach decides not to go for it on fourth down.
Should they pass or should they run?
The fans can question whether it’s the right move for the baseball manager to take the pitcher out of the game.
Should the hitter bunt and try to move the runner over, or should he swing away?
Strategy is a big part of the appeal of football and baseball.
There’s a chess-match aspect to these sports.
There’s a lot of thinking involved. Should we do this? Or should we do that?
I’d Watch Soccer If It Were More Like Ice Hockey
I’m not sure there’s a lot of strategy in hockey either.
But hockey is exciting. Hockey is basically the same game as soccer. But it’s fast. It’s on skates. The rink is small compared to a soccer field.
Hockey is mayhem.
There are lots of shots on goal in hockey, lots of action in front of the net. There are fights. Many hockey players have missing teeth. They look cool. They look rugged. They are rugged. The puck is hard as a rock. It caroms off the boards. There is checking in hockey, where the player gets to slam the other player into the boards. You hear a loud thud when that happens.
Hockey is more like a gang fight on skates. The players are carrying a weapon – their hockey stick. Their skates are razor sharp.
Hockey is a truly dangerous game.
Hockey is much more of a man’s sport than soccer. In soccer, the players fall on the ground if they are barely touched. They then writhe around on the field screaming in hopes of drawing a penalty.
When the penalty comes or doesn’t come, that same player who was writhing around on the field crying suddenly jumps to his feet and resumes playing, perfectly healthy.
Hockey players don’t act like this. They would be laughed off their teams as sissies if they did.
In soccer, the clock keeps running during the alleged injury.
So if a team that’s winning by one goal just wants to run out the clock, that team can just fake all kinds of injuries — which often happens.
That sure makes for an exciting game.
And what’s up with the obsession with the hair of certain World Cup soccer stars?
The star player from Portugal (I forget his name) has a completely different hairdo and hair color every game. How much time is this guy spending in the hair salon?
Shouldn’t he be spending that time watching film or practicing?
Something else I’ve noticed.
Recent immigrants to America learn to love NFL football.
There’s a Mexican restaurant that I go to a lot in Chicago that doubles as a sports bar.
Mexico is known for soccer. It’s their national sport.
But at this Chicago Mexican sports bar I go to, the preferred sport there is NFL football.
Mexicans who move to America quickly become NFL football fanatics. So do Asians and Africans who move here.
These recent Mexican immigrants admit to me that American football is a whole lot more fun to watch than soccer.
They also love boxing and caging fighting.
Something else that bugs me about soccer is that it’s a sport that I feel is being forced on me by liberals who hate American football, who hate violent, dangerous sports.
Liberals are doing everything they can to feminize the NFL. There’s Breast Cancer Awareness month when all the NFL players are expected to wear pink. Kick-off returns are being phased out because they are so dangerous. Defensive players can no longer hit the quarterback, for some reason.
Former NFL great Terry Bradshaw suggests putting a skirt on the quarterback so the defensive player understands more clearly who he can’t hit.
During Super Bowl Week, there’s always the obligatory article in The New York Times on how violence against women (husbands beating their wives) rises during Super Bowl week.
Turns out this is a myth – a complete canard.
Violence against women actually seems to decline during Super Bowl week – probably because husbands are wrapped up in the game. The wife beating seems to resume after the Super Bowl is over.
There’s now the obsession with concussions in the NFL – as if concussions never occurred before now.
So now the NFL has banned leading with your head.
If we want to reduce concussions, maybe football should be played without a helmet, like in the old days. That would discourage players from engaging in head-on collisions with each other.
Some liberal writers have proposed banning football, banning boxing, banning caging fighting, banning car racing, banning all these dangerous sports.
But liberals love soccer.
Soccer’s not the least bit dangerous. About the worst injury you see in soccer is a pulled hamstring.
Well there is that guy in the World Cup from Uruguay who keeps biting the opposing players.
What’s up with that guy? And why doesn’t someone break his nose?
Do you remember when liberals tried to force the metric system on Americans?
I feel they are trying to do this to us with soccer.
Liberals told us we needed to adopt the metric system because that’s what the rest of the world uses.
They told us the metric system makes more sense and is easier to understand.
Not sure that’s true.
A foot is about the length of my foot.
Seems pretty straight forward and simple to me.
I have no idea what 2.34 centimeters is.
Is that like a centipede?
I think America’s measuring system is a lot easier.
But liberals continue to try to push the metric system on us, just like they are desperate to get America to love soccer – so we can be just like the rest of the world.
I don’t want to be like the rest of the world.
Frankly, I was also turned off by the big celebration in the media over USA’s soccer victory over Ghana.
Where the heck is Ghana?
I had to look it up on a map. What’s their population? Do they even have enough people in Ghana to field a soccer team?
Apparently they do.
If America is this excited about its World Cup victory over a dinky little country like Ghana, that’s pathetic.
We’re a nation of 320,000,000 people.
Yet we barely beat Ghana — 2-1.
If Wisconsin played Ghana, that would seem to be a more fair contest.
Then we went on to tie Portugal — another dinky country. This was also hailed by the media as great news for the USA.
If this is great news, America really is in decline.
Then Germany defeats USA, you guessed it . . . 1-0.
Zzzzzzzzzzz.
Here’s something else that’s off-putting.
USA keeps advancing in this World Cup tournament without winning.
We beat Ghana, and that’s it. We then tied Portugal and lost to Germany.
Yet we continue to advance in the tourney.
Why aren’t we eliminated?
Maybe that’s another reason liberals love soccer so much.
Nothing is at stake in these games. Your actual performance in the game makes little difference.
Everyone’s a winner. It’s almost impossible to lose at this game.
So no one feels bad.
UPDATE: Belgium defeats Team USA 2-1 to eliminate the US from World Cup competition.
Actually several games have had "Hydration Breaks" after about 30 minutes in each half. I can see that becoming the soccer version of a "TV Timeout"
They should have the Academy Awards for Soccer. Great Acting.
NFL & college football are all about unnecessary delays.
Time outs. TV time outs. Penalties. Instant replay. Almost a minute between plays.
15 minutes of actual action during 3+ hours time.
That’s only in this World Cup, and only if the temp goes over 38 C (I think that’s the criteria).
They didn’t have any breaks yesterday in the US-Belgium match cuz it didn’t get hot enough.
But I think the networks are going to realize the potential income stream of allowing ads to run during the games and will demand FIFA make them a permanent fixture.
At the rate we're going, in another 20 years the NBA will have stripped its players naked and will be awarding five points if you do a flip before shooting.
Spanish speaking fans do not use equivalent terms when talking about football, or soccer as we call it. By the way, please don't give me that “it's’ football, not soccer” nonsense. Soccer IS a British term. It's short for Association football,” to distinguish it from “Rugby football” (or the “kicking game from the “carrying game”) in Britain in 1863.
In Spanish soccer is played on a “cancha” which means court of field, not pitch, or “campo,” which means field. The score is "uno a cero," which is one to nothing, not "nil."A “side” is “equipo de fútbol,” or “football team.” A side would be “lado de fútbol” which doesn't even make sense.
Do these announcers take the elevator or the lift when leaving the ESPN studio? Do they lift the bonnet or the hood to check their Jaguar in the parking lot when it won't start? This is the worst kind of false snobbery like Obama bowing to every foreign head of state and it makes me crazy!
What's the big rush to talk like a Limey? Didn't we learn anything from the Piers Morgan fiasco?
If you find soccer so boring, I would strongly advise you to not watch it.
Problem solved.
You’re wrong on almost every point. Soccer could use adjustments but not any of those ones you propose.
{{ Adjustment #1: Dramatically shrink the size of the field. Make the field about half the size it is now. This will help increase the action in front of the goal. }}
2 bad things will happen if this was done.
—1. the game would become “Goalie Wars”. Goalies lobbing the ball back and forth hoping the opposing goalie makes a mistake and the ball goes in. The length of the field is very specific to avoid goalies being able to score on each other from their “drop kick”.
—2. You don’t want more action in front of the goal. The more people and it becomes a scrum where the goals are accidental. No skill, just a bunch of wild kicking. The most exciting shots in Soccer are the long shots.
{{ Adjustment #2: Increase the size of the goal. }}
The width of a regulation goal is 18ft. A man standing in the middle can jump to either side and have a slim but possible chance of reaching either post. This encourages the wild and exciting jumping saves. Making it wider would change goal tending for the worse. More defenses packed in the goal to make up.
However increasing the goal height by 6” might be possible. It would encourage more jumping by the goalie which is exciting. It would also encourage more long shots, also exciting.
{{ Adjustment #3: Put sideboards up around the field so the ball doesn’t go out of bounds so much. }}
No, No, No!.... Walls discourage teamwork and discourage running. Walls also allow the ball to be “trapped” leading to a lot of time where the defender and offensive player pretty much just stand there in a stand-off. MMA also suffers from this with their cages.
{{ Adjustment #4: Allow hitting in soccer, like in ice hockey and lacrosse. }}
Sports that allow hitting require pads. Pads hurt running and skill moves. Soccer doesn’t have pads and because there are no pads there aren’t problems with concussions that can end careers and lives.
... You need to learn what “Stoppage Time” is.
... You need to learn what “Set Plays” are.
... You need to learn why games ending in ties can be just as exciting as games ending in a win/loss.... [hint: world cup scoring is done as a tournament - you get points even for the ties, not win/lose like the playoffs or NCAA]
Mexico fans know all about "Dos a Cero" ;)
I believe that Rossini’s description of a Wagner opera applies to soccer: “Beautiful moments but awful quarter hours”. There may be some exciting moments when a skilled ball handler or goal scorer is on the loose, but then everyone spends a few minutes kicking the ball around midfield catching their breath.
It’s like boxing, mostly jabbing and moving around, with only a few significant punches being thrown.
They know about “Dos Equis” two and I have been studying to catch up.
Allow unlimited substitutions. If you are down more than 30 seconds you have to sit out for 15 minutes.
Make that “Dos Equis” TOO, though I have been taking two classes at a time.
Because the author is closed-minded. There is something to appreciate about virtually every sport.
I don’t care for basketball but I appreciate its grace and athleticism. I’m a huge baseball and hockey fan and love to play golf. I can even appreciate NASCAR, though I would prefer not to watch people drive 500 miles a weekend making no right turns. But I don’t post crap about their sport during the Daytona 500, like people who hate soccer seem to think it’s fun to do during the World Cup.
But I also love soccer, which I have played and coached for close to forty years. Scoring means something, it is a very difficult game to master and there is absolutely nothing wrong with either the rules or the dimensions of the goal. Rules don’t change every year like they do in the NFL, and what on earth is wrong with wanting America to beat the world at its own game?
Oh, well. Carry on. Your kids are playing my game. You may as well get used to it.
100% agreement about NBA basketball… As an example, one or two slam-dunks might be palatable, however as a steady a diet is just about as interesting as stuffing a shopping bag at the market.
It was fun playing the sport into college in intramurals, and the NCAA game was always much more interesting, but even tweaking that with a ridiculously close 3-point line among our other changes have kind of ruined the appeal.
Actually the limited substitutions makes soccer a bit more challenging, tactically. I’d hate to see that aspect go, because it would make things too easy to adjust - if you think it’s low-scoring now, imagine being able to sub in an “all out defense” lineup as soon as you go up 1-0.
I do think however in Extra Time, they should waive restrictions on substitutions and play on until somebody scores.
I really don’t understand why they don’t go with The Golden Goal.
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