Soccer needs to do the same thing as hockey: make a line where there is no offside beyond that line. It’s totally dumb to call offside 3 feet in front of the goal. In hockey if you go beyond the blue line everything is OK except you need to say out of the small crease.
Also for soccer - why on Earth can you not pass the ball ahead if you beat the entire defense? That rule is completely bizarre and has no point at all. If you are fast enough to beat the defense than anything should be OK
It’s not something against it per se, but the best baseball games I have seen are low scoring pitchers duels. The bottom line is I don’t see a 1-0 game as “wasted” in any way.
Upping the scoring for the sake of upping the scoring panders to low attention spans and the lowest common denominator. If a goal is easier, it is less exciting. Do you honestly not find defense interesting to watch?
Then a game in which you can’t score at all must pander to an even more exclusive club, right?
Upping the scoring is an attempt to optimize the emotional appeal of the game for observers. There exists a sweet spot (IMO) in which scoring is not too easy and not too hard, that the observer is excited about the accomplishment but still uncertain of the outcome due to the other teams ability to score also. In my opinion, soccer has too little scoring and basketball has way too much. 4 to 7 scores per team per game (for many sports, not sure what to do with basketball) seems to me to be within the sweet spot.
Nick Hornby, Fever Pitch
We like our game just fine, thanks.
That might be the case if I had set upping the score panders to the lowest common denominator. But I said upping the score for the sake of upping the score…
Football fans aren’t sitting crying out for 5-4 games every week. It isn’t hockey where the fans were deserting the game. There simply isn’t a problem at the moment. The Premier League last year averaged 2.5 goals per game. Serie A was slightly higher at 2.6. Both leagues were, week in, week out, fantastically exciting and popular with the fans. You will never convince me seeing 4-3 or 3-2 every week is more exciting that 2-0 and 2-1. It just flies in the face of 40 years of football watching experience for me.
A 6-4 game once in a season - wonderful. 6-4 every week and I would start to get bored.
I am sure you are correct that fans are not asking for more scoring, nor is there a problem for current fans. But I think this is probably due to familiarity with the game as it exists.
As an outside observer (only really watch my kids soccer games, generally), and someone that analyzes this type of stuff with most sports, I think there is a sweet spot that would be considered more enjoyable by more fans than the current amount of scoring if the new way was setup from the beginning. In other words, if you take away the familiarity quotient and start from a clean slate world wide, I think a higher scoring game would be considered more enjoyable. But that’s just my opinion.
Yeah but occasionally in Gaelic Football you do want a game to break out.
Also yeah, in a pick up game of soccer with no offside, the tag of goal hanger was the greatest insult that could be bestowed upon someone.
Something I’ve always found interesting about American Football is that it’s considered a high-scoring game, relative to soccer, but that’s simply due to the scoring system.
Few fans would be disappointed at a result of 14-7, which discounting nearly 100% automatic extra points, is really a 2-1 score.
You are basing your opinion on what would make football a better game to watch based on kids’ games?
How old are these kids? Because I probably wouldn’t make judgments on how baseball could be made a better spectator sport based on observation of Little League games.
No, mostly I was thinking of the pro games I’ve watched (been to one earlier this year). Kids are high teens and select, so it’s not really little league-ish, if that has influenced me.
Honestly, watch a full season of a good league (Premier League, Serie A or La Liga and tell me you think it would be better with close to double the number of goals. Just don’t focus on Chelsea games, otherwise you will get a false opinion… 
It’s not “wasted”. The fact that nobody scored does not mean that nothing happened- and momentum and cheering by the fans can amount to an awful lot even with no score. If a huge underdog manages to pull out a draw against a massive favorite, you can bet the screaming fans are fine with that.
That makes absolutely no sense. The point of the rule is to discourage goal-hanging; your suggestion would make it perfectly okay to goal-hang, just not to almost goal-hang.
I don’t understand what you’re getting at with the second bit. You can pass the ball ahead if the guy you’re passing to is fast enough to beat the offside trap.
What he means is, if two players get past the defence and one of them has the ball, the one with the ball can’t pass to the one without the ball. This is a very strange situation to somebody who’s used to, say, hockey.
Oh. That’s not true. If two players are past the last defender, the ball can be passed between them, just not forwards.
It’s also not true. He can pass the ball backwards to the other player.
A problem with soccer is that not only do they not score, they don’t even get a lot of shots on goal which means there is not a lot of offense. Some games one team may have less than 10 shots on goal.
At least in hockey you can have a 2-1 game but the total shots could be 50 or 60. And of course hockey has a lot of speed and hitting too which fans like. (By hitting, I don’t mean fights but there are those too - I mean legal checks)
I understand the offside rule about not being behind the last defender. But as I said above once you beat all the defenders why are there still restrictions on passing? That’s not hanging out by the goal - you are using speed to beat the defense.
I sort of see your point there, but honestly it doesn’t make any difference; if you have two plays beyond the offside trap chances are you haven’t got space to pass the ball forward anyway.
Plus, in practice, referees won’t bother to whistle any pass in that situation as long as it goes “mostly sideways”.
85 minutes or so of every 90-minute match is “offense”. Anytime a team has the ball and is advancing it towards the other goal, that’s “offense”.
So what if there aren’t a shit-ton of shots on goal? Ice hockey is a niche sport; association football is the most popular sport in the world.
I guess if people passing around the ball 50 yards from a goal is offense, then I guess 85 minutes of a game is “offense”
BTW, isn’t it a joke that championships are sometimes decided just by penalty kicks? I can’t think of any other major sport that decides a title by rules that have nothing to do with the actual game.
Necessary consequence of all the running required. Soccer games are 90 minutes long, with only one real break. Only rugby comes close (actually, rugby is more tiring because of all the contact).
Playing more than half an hour of extra time after the 90 minutes would just be cruel- and possibly dangerous. Most players are cramping by the time they get to 105 minutes, and all of them are by the time they get to 120 (except the goalkeepers).
What do you call it when a team has the ball inside its own 10-yard line in American Football? “Running three boring rushing plays so we can punt?” No, it’s called “offense”.
They need penalty kicks because players are too tired? That doesn’t seem to be a problem with hockey in the playoffs. (or basketball) (And yes I know hockey has 20 guys on a team and only 6 are on the ice at 1 time. ) Those guys are still dead tired after an OT or two , partly because of all the extra gear they wear.
Why not allow more subs in soccer so players are not as tired? I guess that’s just another wacko idea? After all why should the world’s most popular sport change right?