Fowler didn’t score the penalty - his shot was a poor one, easily saved by the keeper. But the keeper failed to hold onto it and one of Fowler’s teammates knocked it in for the goal. Fowler said later that he was trying to score because that was his job, but watching the shot, I doubt that.
That’s so awesome! Any sport that has ‘enforcers’ is alright by me 
A player intending to return the ball to the other team accidentally kicked the ball over the keeper’s head and scored. So his team then let the other team score to make up for it.
Most Americans are familiar with association football, even if they don’t care for it.
And loads of them actually play it. Why, there’s even a professional league or two in the States.
That rumor is awfully persistent.
That’s true, but a surprising number are unaware that an ejected player cannot be replaced (since that is not the case in any of the more predominant team sports here).
Conversely, many from outside of North America are quite surprised to find out that an American football team may continue to field 11 players even when somebody gets ejected from the game, for example.
That’s true, but then the entire concept of unlimited substitutions is rather a bizarre one to fans of non-American sports.
Agreed. The philosophies concerning substitutions between American and non-American (we’re both using those terms quite loosely, but I trust people understand what we mean) team sports are vastly different, but bear enough superficial resemblance to cause confusion in international conversations…
As an American, I never understood the value of limited substitutions. To my mind, it’s equivalent to making every athlete in American sports run a marathon right before playing a game. That would obviously make conditioning a factor, favoring the competitors who were in better shape. But it would also add a metric ton of suck to the contest while sucking out most of the awesome.
This is clearly nonsense as at the start of the game all the players are fresh.
Is this just your guess or have you actually watched much soccer/rugby/cricket? If your hypothesis is correct, then the games should be awesome at the start when the players are fresh, then deteriorate badly. Doesn’t happen.
By this same logic, actual marathoners start the race in a dead sprint, right?
There’s no inherent value to limited substitutions. There’s no inherent value to unlimited substitutions.
Limiting substitutions makes conditioning more of a factor, and favors player talent over coaching/managerial strategy. That’s it.
It doesn’t add any “suck” to a contest. Go tell Jim Thorpe that (American) football had a ton of suck in the twenties because he played both ways.
It’s like boxing without rounds. Resting between rounds removes some suck and adds awesome.
Watching exhausted athletes stagger through the latter stages of a contest is just as uninteresting as watching athletes in peak condition not go 100% in the early stages of a contest to ensure they have enough left in the tank to finish strong.