Whyy the hell are highschool sports so damn vicious? And why are the refs so fucking blind? I’m scratched up, bruised up and fucking limping and the refs didn’t call jack shit! Since when is cleating someone in the thigh legal? FUCK! AYSO is better than this and it’s a purely volunteer league, their refs don’t get pasid like ours. Now I ask the lot of you, WHY?!
Kitty
A better question would be, Why are we allowing our children to participate in this third-world abortion of a pastime? Do we really care if Gabon and Uruguay tied 0-0?
Studies have shown that nine out of ten countries where soccer is most popular are too poor to afford football (and I mean genuine American football, not this lame, Eurasian, joggie-kickie game), baseball equipment, or basketball courts.
Friends, America’s children deserve a higher standard of living than that! I urge everyone to get involved in their local school districtss, and make sure they can afford proper sports equipment!
Fairy Princess Kitty,
Please run before Coldfire arrives, he loves soccer.
Is there even a “soccer season?” Flipping through the channels any weekend, there’s always soccer games on the Spanish language stations, throughout the year. What, do they have playoffs on one week, and then start a new season the next? If *real football was that way, players would be dead after a few years.
[sup]Leave me to end the fun with a request for information, but…[/sup]
How many soccer players have drawn permanent disability pay for post-traumatic stress disorder after hitting someone so hard they never walked again?
Jack Tatum, gotta love him…
At least hundreds of people don’t die at sporting events in the states, cornflakes.
Soccer riots, anyone?
As a ref . . . I have seen shitty reffing. I have also seen plenty of coaches who think they are ARs. I have seen parents being roused by a particular coach to chant things at refs (myself, a few times).
If you have a problem with a ref, talk to that ref. If the ref doesn’t listen lodge a complaint.
Well, certainly not going to get any sympathy from me. In rugby, cleating may certainly not be legal, but it’s a tradition (as I’m sure any player can attest!) Hell, if I DON’T come out of a match with bruises, scratches and cleat marks (and remember…we wear aluminum spikes, not rubber ones), then quite frankly I didn’t have a good game! I’m sorry that soccer is such a rough and tumble game snicker
Well, certainly rugby, which is real football, is that way. In the Southern Hemisphere, players generally begin a season training in January (which is of course summer), participate in 3 months of the Super 12 tournament (which if you’ve never seen then you are certainly missing a treat…high scoring fun…faster paced than any NFL game!) which ends in late May, host Northern teams in June and July, play the Tri-Nations series in July and August (between New Zealand, South Africa and Australia, considered to be the 3 best rugby nations in the world, which makes it the * de facto * yearly championship. Then in September and October, in New Zealand and South Africa they have internal competitions. Finally, November and the beginning of December, the Southern teams head up north to return the touring favor. That many games (can be in the neighborhood of 30) and that much travel (during the Super 12, a team from New Zealand CAN travel across 10 time zones to the western part of South Africa and play without jet-lag adjustment, and vice versa)…certainly takes a toll. And these professional rugby players don’t even make a fraction of what professional soccer players make (considering professional soccer salaries even dwarf Alex Rodriguez-strata money, without the long-term hassles)
Well, there are certainly some big hits in rugby as well, albeit not quite as much so as in the NFL (after all, one isn’t going to fly blindly in without padding), although that lack of padding can create some injuries too. Although I suppose that the focus of a tackle is different with rugby being a continuous game (in football, to stop the play; in rugby to try to turnover the ball). Still…you’re going to take your lumps out there 
Despite the fearsome nature of rugby, rugby fans are exceptionally well-behaved. In fact, after the whistle blows, there is certainly a camraderie between opposing players and fans…they’ll all go and have a pint together in the 3rd half! Certainly never any instances of rioting!
“Soccer…a gentleman’s game played by ruffians; Rugby…a ruffian’s game played by gentlemen”…sums it up pretty nicely I think
As a sports editor for a community paper, I live by this mantra: “Youth sports would be SO much better if the fucking parents weren’t there.”
He certainly does, along with a substantial part of the European contingent around these parts. Hell, some North Americans seem to like it as well.
But what can I say?
The OP is about poor reffing, and I suppose that’s a fair complaint. Happens all the time, at all levels, and I can see how it’s frustrating when you’re the victim of it. You’re not supposed to come off a football pitch with bruises and scratches. And by football, I mean “soccer”. I mean, it’s pretty hard getting bruised during American football, what with all the sissy body protection and such. 
Also, I’ve made it a point not to be drawn into debates again by idiots who need to bring up “soccer riots” as some sort of argument against “soccer”. As if the sport itself is to blame for the bevaviour of a very small fraction of its fans (if hooligans indeed deserve that name). Bullshit. I’ve seen crowd fights in College Basketball and Hockey as well. What does that say about those sports? Fuck all. It merely says that if you put an incrementally large number of people in a hall, there’s an ever-growing probability that some of them are assholes looking for trouble. Same applies to “soccer” riots. Live with it.
If people want to see what this sort of thread can devolve into, do a search for the user name “Krispy Original” and the keyword “soccer”. Fun for all ages. Not.
RTA - what the fuck are you talking about? The elementary reason that so many of the countries that play football (as in the game where you use your foot to hit the ball) are poor is because (now follow me closely here):[ul][li]Most countries in the world are poor.[/li][li]Just about every country plays football.[/ul] The US is the only fucking country that plays fucking tedious American wanky football. This is why 100% of coutries that play it are rich.[/li]
You just keep on playing your own sports. That way y’all can call them the “world series” or some such shit and pretend that you are the world champions. And isn’t that nice for you. The rest of us will carry on playing sports together and get a real competition going.
Jeez. You take the fact that all football needs to play it is some semblance of an object to kick around - and you turn it into a disadvantage? WTF? Well next time I go down the park with my mates maybe we’ll consider taking ten tons of equipment with us. But somehow I don’t think that it’s going to happen.
pan
Oh - and Fairy Princess - I think that the complaint about poor reffing is entirely justified. I hate being kicked off the park too.
And to those who think that it isn’t a dangerous game - you’ve clearly never seen professionals breaking limbs in horrific career-ending ways. Anyone remember David Busst of Coventry City colliding with Peter Schmeical?
For that matter anyone remember World Cup 82 with Schumacher attempting to kill that French striker by flying kicking him in the throat?
pan
My 2 cents, from here where I can only watch the US armed forces network TV:
Fuck ALL televised sports!!
Seems like every morning when I get up, and want to see the news before going to work, all that’s on is some stupid fucking sports game!! Drives me fucking nuts!
As to their dumb-ass sports trivia (Hey sports fan! Who got butt-fucked the hardest in the showers after the 25th Superbowl? We’ll have the answer after this…), I have the answer for you right here: WHO FUCKING CARES?
Whew! I feel a whole lot better now! I think I’m starting to understand the Pit!
FYI: where I live, there is only 1 English TV channel, AFKN (Armed Forces Korea Network)… basically sports 24 hours a day, with brief breaks for news/sitcoms…
Elwood - yes there’s a football season. In England it starts in August and finishes in May. Saying that, the erosion of the close season is a major talking point in the game.
Also many countries have a winter break.
pan
ps riots? Only in international matches. I can’t remember the last riot in a domestic game in this country.
I fully sympathise with the complaint in the OP about poor refereeing. Studs in the thigh should most often be called as a foul, but on some occasions it might happen in the course of a legitimate challenge for a 50/50 ball.
What many Americans seem not to realise is that football is a contact sport. The rest of the world plays contact sports without a ton and a half of padding and just because it doesn’t have a bunch of flabby gorillas (or toothless Canadians) charging each other off the ball (or puck) doesn’t mean you shouldn’t expect to pick up a few bruises along the way.
Ooohh…the ZP :). Must admit to favoring Bath as they have the best-ever American player, Dan Lyle, playing for them…mean sob!!! But must admit to preferring NZ rugby myself.
Fully agree…let’s throw off the padding and play!! (and yes, get rid of the damn scrumcaps, especially on backs…no need for em!)
I always enjoy the whinning of players and fans, the parents too, mostly at the younger levels of soccer.
Everybody can do it better they say, or know what the ref should have done. :: sheesh ::: Go get certified, do some games.
You did that huh? You did a couple of under 10 games? COOL…
Now stick, work your way up and and get to some senior games. College, adult leagues.
Wanna play “GOD?” Be a soccer ref.
Soccer has no rules, it has laws.
They mostly start out with, “If in the opinion of the ref…”
Right or wrong, but right now, you do not get to go think about it. Game = slow, just try it. Play or Ref.
Rugby is also a neat game, heck, all the ‘games’ are.
[hijack]
Am I the only one having problems mentally combining the username Fairy Princess Kitty with the image of someone leaving the soccer field “scratched up, bruised up and fucking limping” with a complete set of cleats in the thigh ?
[/hijack]
Ah well, not that I know jack sh*t about soccer (for a European), but if I understand the American take on it correctly, it’s played as a not-so-violent game when compared to American football. If that’s the case, then the refs obviously need to be on the bounce and prevent the game from becoming too physical. But part of the responsibility falls on the coaches as well, IMHO.
And kabbes, of course you’ll get hurt when running into Peter Schmeichel - the man’s considered a wall, after all.
Irish hurling is a form of football? Eeewwwwww.
I can’t even think of the last riot that actually took place at a game. Usually when there’s trouble it’s in a pub, or in the street, not at the football ground. And the people who cause it are usually the sort to start trouble anywhere they go, with or without a match to accompany it.
And no, hurling is not a form of football.