Great – post a question about soccer on Mexican television and Fair Princess Kitty yells at me as if I’m marching in Klan robes during a norteno concert on Cinco de Mayo. Yeah, that’s the PC attitude – ash about something in Mexico, and you’re automatically considered a racist.
Listen, I flip through the channels, I hear a couple of announcers speaking rapidfire Espanol, and see players running against a backdrop including ads for Pan Bimbo, Pemex, terra.com and Carta Blanca Beer. There’s no large cities mentioned, and I don’t know the names of every small town in Costa Rica, Venezuela or Ecuador to be able to tell where each one is located. My Spanish is limited to what’s needed to get by within the 50 mile zone without looking like the Ugly American, so I can’t tell that there’s different leauges or not.
“Deal with it.” Hey, I don’t have a problem with it. If folks want to play soccer year 'round, more power to 'em. Back home, we’d play street hockey in July, and there’s nuts here that play golf in December with orange balls so they can see 'em in the snow.
: Nor will it affect my innate sense of well-being or the
: natural feeling of superiority I get when I change the
: channel on a bunch of one-name Latins jumping around
: while some baboon shrieks GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOALLLLLLL over
: and over for 15 minutes.
Be careful about what you say … Fair Princess Kitty might call you racist.
Form now on, let’s only talk about Europeans playing soccer, After all, it’s un-PC to mention … well, Ic an’t mention it, because then I’d be accoused of racism.
I can’t believe your best comback is to call me a girl. It is to laugh.
Soccer is not boring and pointless, but I can see how it would seem that way to someone who can only be entertained by big things crashing into each other.
Get this. I’m on a YMCA men’s soccer team. I suck. I mean I really suck. That’s OK. I wanted to learn the game, so I paid my money and I joined. So far, I’m loving it. We’ve played two games (lost both, by the way. But we’re getting better, and I scored two of our goals in the last game.) and we need all the practice time we can get. Well tonight, I got out to the practice field, expecting to run my ass off, and hopefully learn a few things.
Nobody’s there. Huh? Nobody showed up?
I was out of town for work today, and I just assumed that practice was on at the same time as always. I called a friend of mine to ask where everybody was.
“Oh, practice got cancelled.”
“Obviously. Why?”
“Somebody complained that it was too cold.”
TOO COLD? Are you out of your fucking mind? Practice got cancelled because it was too fucking cold? What kind of pansies am I playing with here? Get your asses out on the field and practice, you lazy jackasses!
Seriously, I used to play Ultimate Frisbee in the snow, with shorts and a sweatshirt on. Fuck the cold! You run hard enough, and you’ll warm up!
We’re gonna play our next fucking game now without fucking practicing, because it’s gonna be fucking cold the rest of the week, and we’re gonna fucking lose, because my fucking teammates can’t stand a little fucking discomfort, and get out there and fucking improve their fucking game.
Replace “jackass” in the above post with any other insult that springs to mind. I just realized how stupid that sentence sounds. I really should edit my posts.
As noted, there are several major Central/South American leagues. Argentina, Brazil(though they speak Portugese), Chile, Paraguay, and Mexico are all pretty well known. That’s probably part of the reason why you see soccer on the television most weekends. You’re seeing games from all of these leagues.
In Mexico, soccer is really the major sport. Lucha libre(wrestling) and the small baseball league aside, futbol is the only game in town. While the US can go from baseball-football-basketball, Mexico only has futbol. With their warm climate, playing year round isn’t as impractical as it would be in the US.
Brazil, and the other C.A. & S.A. leagues to an extent, are quite corrupt. More games usually equals more money for team owners and television stations. League operators are sometimes willing to extend the season or add a winter season if it means they’ll be financially rewarded. Brazil’s league is an absolute mess, they have several seasons and some of the teams play more than a hundred matches a year.
I’m not necessarily talking about you, Snooooopy, but I find that a lot of people (particularly North Americans) who dislike football really don’t understand it. They may understand the rules, or the basic rules at least, but they don’t understand some of the more complex rules and they certainly don’t understand the tactics. Things like the comparative advantages of a 4-4-2 or a 3-5-2, the purpose of the backpass rule, or why a manager might substitute a midfielder for a striker when the team needs to score a goal or two. I’ve tried to get soccer-haters who claim to understand the game to explain things like that and usually it becomes obvious right away they don’t know what I’m talking about. You really can’t say you “understand” the game if you don’t understand things like that. And that’s all pretty simple stuff
Which doesn’t make your aesthetic dislike for it any less valid. American football bores the hell out of me, personally … but I’ll be the first to admit I don’t really “understand” it, despite having watched it dozens of times.
Since I’m a sports editor, and I do have to cover high school soccer games, would you explain the comparative advantages of a 4-4-2 or a 3-5-2, the backpass rule and the thing about substitutions? I think the quality of my stories would benefit from that.
I, of course, cling to my primary contention that it’s OK to dislike soccer on an aesthetic level. I would argue that understanding the higher tactics could just as easily give me a deeper understanding of why I don’t like the game.
And, just in case you didn’t catch a previous thread in which soccer came up, I told Jack Batty that I would have no problem PLAYING the sport, because when you’re playing you’re busy figuring out where to kick the ball and where to be, etc. WATCHING the sport, on the other hand, is not so fun.
Tell you what, for all the people who hijacked this and turned it into a “I love/hate football” debate, why don’t we just state the obvious summary - some of you love it, some of you hate it, and some are indifferent, just like every other fucking sport on the planet.
As for the OP:
I’ve never been able to work out why volunteer refs tend to be better than paid ones, but I’ve seen it happen as well. The only theory I’ve got is that volunteer refs are doing it because they want to. As for paid ones - well surely you’ve had days when you’ve gone to work and felt like your heart wasn’t in it.
I never said that soccer isn’t a real sport…hell, I used to be a player in high school. I’m just sick and tired of the bullshit around it. I mean, they should be giving out gold medals for all the dives and Academy Awards for all the acting (hurt) that ensues! Not to mention all those fucking people who forget it’s not an individual sport.
Well, if the referee is an inept fucking jackass then by all means you give twice as good as you get! Someone gives you a cleating, take their number and give em a cleating right back!! As for kicks in the head/leg…hey, you play defense as well, do you not?? Certainly your foot can slip up in a tackle and “accidentally” hit someone!
You’re probably saying that rugby sounds like a vicious, brutish game, and well, you’re half-right. We’ll certainly wait for the referee to sort out any “argy bargy” (as the great Bill McLaren would say), but if he won’t, then it won’t take us long to sort it out on our own!
Hey, just remember…pain is temporary and pride is forever!
Well, I play 80 minutes, and I have to be stronger than any soccer player and at least as fit (wrestling someone to the ground takes a hell of a lot of fitness…picture doing that for 80 mins…not to mention getting banged up being tackled, plus all the other parts of contesting that are exceptionally draining, but are rather complex to explain in a basic introduction like this!) So if I were to say that soccer wasn’t a real sport, I could get away with it!
…and I think it takes even more to play rugby :). Split second decisions are one thing when the most that can happen is someone comes in to kick the ball away; it’s another when you have a 240 pounder running for you to smash you into oblivion!!! As for knowing how your teammates play…once again, it’s one thing to make a missed pass , it’s another that if you aren’t working as a team you could break your damn neck or at the very least get stomped to hell…THAT’s when team reliance generally tends to come into play!!
Certainly hope that this didn’t come across as a hijack, but well…this goes out to my European rugby mates who don’t get the respect that they so richly deserve because
people don’t care to learn about it (Americans don’t know anything bout rugby either, but at least respect the physical nature of the sport!). Not to mention the way that most Europeans bash rugby without knowing about it…sure seems to come across as hypocritical when you talk about Americans bashing soccer without prior knowledge!
Low-level violence at matches is not that uncommon in England, but it is not that uncommon in any place where large groups of beer-fuelled young men gather together. You’re still safer at a football match than in the average city centre on a Saturday night.
As for riots, the last occasion I can think of on which there was anything that you might describe as a riot at a match in Europe was Heysel.
Well said. I never understand why people who claim to hate the game also claim to have invested enough time and effort in watching it to understand it properly.
Also, I’ve seen US TV coverage of international football matches. Some of it is very poor indeed. It’s quite clear that the commentators sometimes don’t know what they’re talking about. I don’t see how the average American can understand football unless they’ve played it or lived abroad.
Snooopy, your questions await answering
Soccer is a physical game. Fairy Princess Kitty, the size of your opponent dosent matter. Every player, no matter how physical should know how to give, as well as recieve. I in know way endorse on-pitch violence, but very often standing up for yourself on the pitch will lead to the other player backing down, and then you let your feet do the talking.
I … I … I’m speechless. Coldfire’s hero of the week? I mean it was an honor just being nominated but I never thought I’d win. I’ll do my best to uphold the traditions which have been set forth.
[sub]Just don’t ask me if I’m a Rush fan. I want to hold on to the title in good standing.[/sub]
RM, what position do you play. I’m a rugby player myself, and used to play at Uni and regional level as a (tight head) lock/prop. I’ll give you that rugby players need to be stronger than football players, but there’s very few who could say they were fitter in terms of aerobic fitness than a football player of the same level - and I’m admitting here that as a forward most any back could run rings around me.
Several of the commentators on American tv are British or Irish. Which doesn’t mean they aren’t crap I do think it’s gotten better over the past few years, though.
I’m sure somebody’s going to come along and point out that most Americans have, in fact, played football, so I would like to point out that it really doesn’t count if you only played between the ages of 7-12 on a team with a coach recruited from the local Little League.
But we’re getting better, and I scored two of our goals in the last game.) and we need all the practice time we can get. Well tonight, I got out to the practice field, expecting to run my ass off, and hopefully learn a few things.
