How do I get to know football/soccer?

The Game Room
1

Pretty much all my male friends, my family and even my gf love football (the FIFA/UEFA one), they not just like, but love it. I on the other hand, despite being a average guy, I have absolutely no interest in it and it’s really, really bothering me.

My cousin is playing in a more important regional club, so my entire family likes to watch him on tv, but I can’t since I have no idea what’s going on, also my best friends bet all the time and my gf knows all players from all bigger world clubs, so what are some of the most important things that I should know about football in the start, ranked, for example 1. basic rules, 2. most important clubs, 3. this, 4. that,etc… ?

Most people would probably advise me to just be myself and ignore it, but I’ve been doing that my entire life and I don’t like being the only guy I know that doesn’t even know the basic things and I feel ashamed a little to be honest, so I just want to learn the basics, to know what kinds of competitions there are,etc.

2

You don’t get a sport? It’s not a crime, no biggie. I don’t get American Football, but I understand many people do and great for them. Ditto Ice Hockey.

One of the things about being a sports fan is understanding that fans can have an overarching love for a their sport and the athleticism and skill that goes along with playing it.

3

Surely your friends, family and girlfriend will be delighted to explain everything to you, and to answer all your questions?

4

Are you American or Canadian? If so, they give us an anti-soccer vaccine at birth. It takes a few years to work and isn’t 100% but it is remarkably effective overall. There are millions of Americans who played soccer when they were young, try hard to watch the World Cup every four years and still don’t get the appeal.

I know a few soccer fans at work but they are all foreign born. I could give you my opinion that it isn’t just you because soccer (football) is a game for people that can’t afford better sports but I won’t because that would be rude.

5

You might want to start at the Wikipedia article to get an overview and a layout of the rules and such (the “History” section is long and could be skipped, or put off till later). Then maybe watch a game with one sympathetic friend who will point out basic plays, rules, etc. and answer questions in a gentle manner.

6

If you really want to get into it then the two best ways are through playing and going to the stadium to watch the game. This is the way to emotionally connect. Problem with the first of these is that it’s v hard to get a late start playing football, as controlling objects with your feet is hard. Indeed, this is the base on which football’s supremacy is built - sports where you control the ball with your hands can only ever amount to artisanal, rustic grunting when compared to the poetry of football.

Aside from that, football is understood on a very simple level by the vast majority of fans, IMHO. It is after all a simple game, so I guarantee that your friends and family aren’t watching the match with some deep insights that are unavailable to you. So just engage with the games and you’ll be on the same level as (nearly) everyone else in short order.

To understand the deep game is difficult with football - harder than a lot of sports ISTM. Watching on TV makes it hard to see how the team as a whole is shaping up, but it does give you good retrospective analysis [sometimes, depending on the show]. The level of pundity we get in the UK is comical - literal man-down-the-pub commentary. So I woudn’t worry about lacking knowledge of the game, watch ten games and you’ll already know as much as Alan Shearer.

7

Speaking as another non-footballer from a football-obsessed society, one fundamental tip:

  • ignore any attempts to discuss the offside rule for at least a year or two - that way madness lies.

I’m with BusyScissors on the emotional connection thing. Most people in the UK come to it through identification with one team or another, for reasons which in many cases they may forget entirely. And I can recall even my mother, as well as myself, being gripped by the England/Portugal semifinal in the 1966 World Cup (much more so than the eventual final - we won both, doncha know…).

Being a bookish kind of person, I naturally think of books that might help explain this side of it (can’t help with the technicalities/overview aspect, I’m afraid) - Arthur Hopcraft’s The Football Man comes to mind, though with the advent of vast amounts of TV money into the game and the globalised big business it’s become at the highest level have changed the environment he was writing about.

On second thoughts, for more up-to-date information, you might also look at The Secret Footballer:

8

Fundamentally, pick a team and go watch them! I wasn’t into football, when I moved to a new area I started supporting the local team as a social thing to meet people. Watch enough and youll start to get it.

9

Okay, so here’s a weird suggestion: the animated Japanese series Whistle!

On the one hand, you can enjoy a fairly standard sports underdog-working-hard narrative, on the other you’ll end up with a pretty decent idea of the basics in a mildly entertaining way.

10

This thread’s goals will be better served elsewhere. Kicked off to the Game Room from IMHO.

11

Get a Playstation, Xbox, or a gaming computer and buy any version of FIFA (they change only marginally from year to year) and play it. I’m sure there are also high quality, detailed mobile games if that’s more your speed.

It’s one thing to read the rules and watch it on TV, but, personally, I didn’t really “get” soccer until I was a participant (in this case virtually, but a participant nonetheless). You could just find some other people and actually play soccer, but this way is a lot less tiring and doesn’t require organizing other people.

It’s how I learned baseball and hockey, as well.

12
  1. Basic rules of soccer:
    a) Unless you are the goalkeeper, you cannot touch the ball with your hands.
    b) If you are the goalkeeper, you can touch the ball with your hands only within the larger box drawn around the space in front of your goal (the penalty box).
    c) There are certain things players cannot do in their attempt to get/control the ball. Some of them are considered “really bad things”, and result in a “direct” free kick. These include things like grabbing your opponent, kicking your opponent, tripping your opponent, handling the ball deliberately, etc.
    d) If you do one of the “really bad things” in your team’s penalty box, the opposing team gets a “penalty kick”, taken from the little spot 12 yards in front of goal, with everyone else out of the penalty box. It’s about an 85% sure thing they will score.
    e) There is a law called “offside” which works somewhat like hockey’s version. it’s a bit complicated, and trying to understand all the tricky parts is probably not worth the effort (even the referees get it wrong from time to time). Just be aware of it and you’ll get the hang of when it happens from watching. It precludes a player from standing right in front of the goal and getting a pass so he can easily score.
    f) Almost all soccer leagues count their time UP, not down. The game is two 45 minute halves, with time added on at the end of each half by the referee to account for things that wasted time (injuries, substitutions, etc.).
    g) The clock doesn’t ever stop.

Oh, and as you should realize, the most goals wins, and ties are generally speaking an acceptable result, though occasionally in some competitions, they are avoided through use of extra time and, if needed, a series of penalty kicks by each team.

  1. Most important leagues:
    a) The English Premier League
    b) The Spanish La Liga
    c) The German Bundesliga
    d) The Italian Serie A
    e) The French Ligue 1

In the English league, the primary clubs are: Manchester United (usually red shirts, white shorts), who have won more league titles than any other club; Liverpool (usually red shirts and shorts) who have the second most league titles, but who have been less important lately; Chelsea (blue tops and bottoms), who are owned by a Russian billionaire who’s cash has made them very good for about 15 years now; Manchester City (light blue tops and bottoms), a lesser club from Manchester who have also been bought by a billionaire who is trying to turn them into a Chelsea. Other clubs worth mentioning: Tottenham Hotspur, a North London club; Everton, another club from the city of Liverpool; Leicester City, the winners of the Premier League last season in a stunning upset (think the Houston Astros winning the World Series), but who may not survive another season in the league.

In the other leagues, there tend to be two or three teams worth paying attention to at most. The usual suspects are Barcelona, Reál Madrid and Atlético Madrid in the Spanish league; Bayern Munich in the German league; Juventus, Inter Milan, and sometimes Roma in the Italian league; Paris St. Germain, Monaco in the French league.

  1. Competitions:

The competition structure is unlike anything in the US. For these big clubs there are five different competitions going on during the season. They are:
a) The league: usually consisting of 18 - 20 teams, playing a double-round robin with home and home games. Thus, for example, the Premier League has 20 teams and plays 38 games. The league winner is the team at the top of the table after the season is done; no playoffs! Wins count 3 pts., draws 1 pt.
b) A domestic “cup” competition in which any club in the country can compete!! This runs on a strict knockout basis usually. Larger clubs are seeded in at higher levels. In England, this is called the “FA Cup”, and is quite prestigious. The final is often played after the league season has ended.
c) A “League” cup competition: similar to the domestic cup, but only involving the top two to four tiers of clubs. Much less prestigious.
d) The UEFA Champions League: Originally for the prior season’s league champions from all of Europe, it has now become the de facto European super league. The top countries in Europe send multiple teams (England, for example, gets four). It plays on Tuesday and Wednesday nights during the season. The structure of the “league” involves both pools of teams (four per pool) and knockout competition played over two home-and-home games. This is the most prestigious competition in Europe.
e) The UEFA Europa League: A competition for teams that did well the prior year in their domestic league, but didn’t quite qualify for the Champions League.

The season in Europe runs August to May. Some leagues in snowy countries take a winter break during January and February.

  1. Non-European Soccer: There are analogs to the above structure everywhere in the world. Thus, in the US: MLS is the top league, there is a domestic Cup (the Lamar Hunt US Open Cup), the CONCACAF Champions League, etc. Leagues in Latin/South America have slightly different competition structures, often playing two halves of a season, with separate champions for each, who then play for an overall champion. But most of the non-European leagues are not widely broadcast, though if you speak Spanish, you can watch them on ESPN Desportes, or any of the Spanish-language networks.

  2. World soccer: Each national association has a national team. Those teams play in two sets of competitions: The World Cup (held every four years), which takes two years of qualifying play to distill 32 teams that spend their summer in some lovely country playing for the most prestigious sporting title in the world; the respective Continental Association championships (for example, the UEFA Championship for Europe), which are not as uniform as to how they are run. The most watched is the European Championships, which run like a mini-World cup every four years, but offset from the World Cup. Top countries include Brazil, Argentina, Germany, Italy, Spain, France, and the Netherlands; England would like to think they should be counted among those countries, but actual results don’t support that theory. :smiley:

My recommendation: Pick a club to watch that you have the ability to see regularly on TV, and learn what you can about them. As you watch them, you’ll become more and more knowledgeable about the sport. And, as you watch them, you’ll become more and more “into” the game; fandom does that to people. :wink:

13

DSYoungEsq, Did you just describe the English Premier League and fail to mention Arsenal? :wink: Not that I’m a fan (I back Newcastle), but you know, they are pretty big.

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Anyways, it would help JakeRS to know what country you are from. That’ll help. The basics are in DSYoungEsq Point #1. I would also recommend DCnDC’s suggestion to play a game of FIFA - that’ll help you understand the tactics a bit more.

My recommendation would be to watch your local team, preferably in person if you can, with your friends or gf. That way you can feel the emotion of the crowds while your friends or gf can explain what is going on a bit.

14

Just two things to add to DSYoungEsq’s post:
When a team is fouled and gets a free kick, the other team has to be ten yards away when they kick it. Sometimes the referee will pace off the ten yards and move the defenders back and/or mark the ten-yard distance.

And, if someone does something very dangerous or unsportsmanlike (i.e. deliberate intentional foul), the referee might (in addition to awarding a free kick to the other team) show the player a yellow card as a warning. If, after that, the player does another thing that merits a yellow card, the player gets shown a red card, and is kicked out of the game (for something really bad, the referee can show a red even if the player hadn’t gotten a yellow yet). Their team can’t replace the red-carded player, so they have to play with one less person the rest of the game. Typically there’s a couple yellow cards per match, but red cards are rare (maybe 1 in 20 games or less).

Finally, in case it’s not clear, players will play for one ‘club’ team (for instance Manchester City) and, if they’re good enough, one national team (for instance, the U.S. Men’s National Team). Matches are attempted to be scheduled so that national team members won’t have to miss club matches, but it happens sometimes.

Which na
, based roughly on their birth citizenship, but with enough loopholes and broad definitions that most people could easily qualify for at least a couple different

15

You can always just fake it. Say “Liverpool,” then shake your head and nod knowingly.

16

That is what they learned to do on The IT Crowd. Other helpful phrases are:

“Did you see that shot? Unbelievable!”

“I think the defense could do a little better sometimes.”

“We can win if the offense can score as much as they are capable.”

You will be regarded as a sports genius in no time.

17

I only mentioned teams that win silverware. :eek::smiley:

18

Bit of an Anglo-centric bias here. I mean, it’s not like Premier League clubs do particularly great in Europe or anything.

19

More of a money-centric bias. List of professional sports leagues by revenue - Wikipedia lists the Premier League as the highest grossing league.

Interesting that the #2 league in England is bigger than MLS.

(Also, maybe this is just a Northerner bias, but I thought the NHL was more comparable to the NBA than those numbers indicate)

20

No. My point is that, other than the limited number of clubs in question, over the last, say, ten years, no other clubs have made significant, constant appearances at the top of the tables. Only the Serie A has really had any significant turnover in that time (I remember when it was Inter, AC, Juventus, and almost no one else in the discussion).