So your contention is that the game was too much of a high scoring shootout before 1990, and the evolution in Finals to very low scoring affairs is an improvement. That right?
If by “don’t seem to get” you mean “don’t agree”, then yes.
And there are actually a couple real soccer fans ITT who are open to the idea of a bigger goal, or higher scoring in general. What do you say to them?
Nope. The quality of the game has nothing to do with how many goals are scored. I’m not sure how many times we can repeat this before you start to get it.
Let’s give ten more a go:
The quality of the game has nothing to do with how many goals are scored.
The quality of the game has nothing to do with how many goals are scored.
The quality of the game has nothing to do with how many goals are scored.
The quality of the game has nothing to do with how many goals are scored.
The quality of the game has nothing to do with how many goals are scored.
The quality of the game has nothing to do with how many goals are scored.
The quality of the game has nothing to do with how many goals are scored.
The quality of the game has nothing to do with how many goals are scored.
The quality of the game has nothing to do with how many goals are scored.
The quality of the game has nothing to do with how many goals are scored.
I disagree with them, but at least they are coming from a position where they know something about the game and can argue their case, unlike you that seems to think Sepp Blatter controls how the game is played and has got all your knowledge from Wikipedia and watching your son play. My Dad used to watch me play Rugby, I doubt he could tell you how many points you get for a try these days (it got raised from 4 to 5 since I stopped playing).
I also think they’d agree with me that you can have an amazing 0-0 draw.
So you think a 0-0 games is, almostby definition, a less entertaining game than a 5-0 thrashing?
*I’d *say the same to them as to you. I have no need of such concepts in my hypothesis. You’ve yet to give me a convincing argument that more goals = better entertainment.
Remember, pretty much every one of us has played in a game with massively high scoring, we do it week in, week out. The amateur game is more high scoring than the pro but it doesn’t mean that game is better.
Nope, not going to let you get by with that straw man. Close games, in any sport, are inherently more exciting.
OTOH, if it is my team, my beloved hometown team that I root for through thick and thin, and they are the ones *giving *the thrashing, then certainly I would prefer the 5-0 game.
I have also noted that very low scoring games can be exciting too, if they are rare.
I wonder if, as an NFL fan, I’m just inherently more open to change. The NFL tweaks rules all the time, often to keep things higher scoring, and it has only (IMO) improved the game. You always hear a few people grumble whenever they change something, but overall the game is more popular than ever.
And in my other favorite sport, tennis, I wish they would change some things. There’s no way the rectangular court they happened to end up with is the ideal configuration. If there were half-circles on each side of the net (picture the top of a basketball “key”), with an “out” area within a few feet on each side of the net, that would be a ferocious-hitting, higher quality game IMO.
Less radically, even if they keep all the other rules the same, they should change the scoring. There are too many situations in tennis where the stakes aren’t high enough, because the point being played just doesn’t contribute much to the final outcome, especially in men’s tennis (for instance, when the set is “on serve” and the server is up 40-0). They should play fewer points per game (like if it is 30-0 or 30-15, that is game point); or totally restructure, have players alternate serving two points each (once into each service box) and make it so the first player to 100 points (or maybe 150 for men in the Slams) is the winner. Then every point would count.
Anyway, OT but my point is that I’m willing to be flexible even about the sports I already love. Y’all could learn something from me. 
Doing a smiley doesn’t immune you from being a dick.
We’ve already shown we are not immune to change. I’ve given you examples of good changes that have been made and also examples of what I would like to see changed.
It is just that I think your idea is awful.
You say “delightful musings”. I say curmudgeonly moron. The Andy Rooney of Sports.
That may explain the Univision ratings increase, but what about the ESPN ones? What about the new $90mil per year MLS deal, between ESPN, FOX, and Univision (ESPN and FOX are paying half of that total amount)? The expansion of the MLS into those Latino strongholds of Seattle, Portland, and Vancouver a few years back? NBC paying $80mil per year to broadcast the English Premier League on Saturday mornings (which has done pretty well)? Fox buying the rights to broadcast the German League (Bundesliga) in 2015?
It ain’t just because there are more Latinos in the country (from my experience Latinos aren’t super interested in the North European leagues).
:eek:
what?
“higher quality game” ? can you seriously say this with a straight face knowing that we have just had a 5 year period of tennis that is, without any debate, the finest quality amongst the strongest quartet that the world has ever seen. Three of the all-time greats and another that would be a multi-multi winner in any other era.
I am speechless. I really can’t think of any way to respond to this.
Where did you get that I don’t agree that those players are great? (And there’s also lots of good stuff going on in women’s tennis as well, BTW.) Or even that I don’t greatly enjoy watching (and playing) the game as it is? My entire point was that I can love, adore, a game and still think it can be improved. You are just illustrating that many others in this thread do not seem to be able to hold these ideas simultaneously.
I think if the court were shaped as I described, it would be even more awesome to see those players hitting into it. But I don’t know that for sure; it is a radical change and it would be a risk. They have grown up with the court we have (though on the other hand baseball hitters seem to be able to deal with hitting in parks with vastly different shapes). And maybe my proposed shape would not be an improvement. But it does seem like folly to argue that the court dimensions, which were set in a completely different era, are ideally suited to the talents of 21st-century tennis players, right down to the last centimetre, buy some incredible stroke of luck or prescience on the part of some official a century plus ago.
In any case, though, I don’t see how you can really dispute my point about scoring. You could keep the court dimensions and all other rules identical and change the scoring and you would have far fewer “pointless points”. As it is now, it’s sort of like the electoral college, right down to the possibility that the player who wins the most points loses the match. Except that at least in a presidential election, we don’t have to spend as much time watching candidates campaign pointlessly in Wyoming or Vermont as we do watching them campaign in Ohio or Florida. Why not edit out a lot of that dead space and have the players play, and spectators watch, points that really count towards the final outcome? When we have those great players competing against each other, why wouldn’t we want to see more important points between them, and fewer irrelevant rallies?
All sporting rules are inherently arbitrary.
You could, in theory, still play baseball if the rules were changed to three balls for a walk and two strikes for an out (and in fact 4 balls and 3 strikes weren’t always standard). And you could also argue that your rules would result in a faster-paced game more geared to modern attention spans. You could also put the fences at about 300 feet, because hey, people like home runs, right?
In practice nobody would want it because the game that would result would be so fundamentally different in its strategies and style of play that it would be nearly unrecognizable from what they thought of as “baseball.” That doesn’t make them “stubborn traditionalists” it makes them people who don’t want to see their game fundamentally altered.
Soccer with routine 7-6 scores is as utterly alien to fans of that sport as suggesting that baseball should have 17-15 scores and seven home runs a game, or that basketball should play with a five-pound ball and have 36-28 scores. It’s ridiculous to propose the game be fundamentally altered into something it is not and never has been, and then insist that people who don’t want to play the new sport you’ve invented are all luddites.
Incremental changes are one thing – a couple people in the thread have said that making the goal a half-meter wider might not be a bad idea – but insisting that soccer be just like basketball and goals be made commonplace is something
very, very different; basically a reinvention of the sport into something different. You’re responding to rejection of your reinvention as if it included rejection of any change whatsoever. That isn’t the case.
I think I’m generally on your side of this argument (I don’t see a pressing need to do something to increase scoring), but I think you’re overstating your case.
If I was really looking forward to a world cup final, and I encountered a genie in a bottle and got 3 wishes, and one of those wishes had to be to choose ahead of time what the final score of the game would be (without specifying the winner), I would go for either 2-1 or 3-2. I think a game with those final scores are more likely to be exciting and satisfying than 0-0 or even 0-1.
The WC final we just saw was a good game and ended 1-0, but it wasn’t a GREAT game by any stretch of the imagination.
And while I admit that I’m a pretty casual fan, I feel like there’s some general agreement that goals make a game better. Announcers, who have British accents so I know they’re knowledgeable, often comment that this particular game needs an early goal (particularly one scored by the more offensive-minded team), because that forces the other team to come out and play, etc.
None of which is the same as higher-scoring-equals-more-fun, but do think that you’re reacting a bit too far in the other direction.
I think the REAL problem (to the extent that there is one) is that elimination-round games tend to be less good games than either the group games in the WC or league games, maybe because everyone is so cautious. I think 8 of the 10 most exciting games at this WC were in the group stages, or something like that.
How to fix it? It’s not easy… but one slightly radical possibility is to do the PKs before the game even starts. Then one of the teams knows they HAVE to score and they CAN NOT play for penalties, and (to me) soccer games tend to be at their most exciting when the pressure is on one side, so they have to come forward and attack, and they risk further counterattacks, etc.
You keep repeating this, but it’s missing the point. Yes, a 0-0 game can be well-played and exciting; it can also be dull as dirt. Same with 5-4.
The question is: On balance, which of the two is more interesting, especially to people not already attuned to the finer points of the game? I don’t think there’s any question it’s the latter.
In and of itself, that doesn’t mean any changes should be made, let alone radical changes. But if soccer wants to grow in the US – and ISTM it does – it does have to at least consider the perceptions of the people it’s trying to woo. When my international friends watch baseball, their immediate reaction is that it’s too slow-paced; and coming from their background, they’re right. If baseball wants to expand into new markets that perceive it as slow-paced, it would be well-advised to look and see if there are ways it can tinker around the edges that would not alienate it’s base.
ETA: Simulpost with Max. Love the PK’s before the match idea.
I’ll answer this first because it will clear up the rest of the post:
I want more scoring, less emphasis on defense, more emphasis on offense, no ties, no penalty kicks, a clear winner and loser, more transparency with regards to the time, elimination of stoppage time and the addition of instances where the clock stops, harsher punishment for flopping, reduction of luck playing a part in games, and an increase of situations where skill is important.
But most of all I want people arguing against changes to stop making the frankly outrageous claim that any changes would somehow fundamentally alter the game. I want them to acknowledge that any changes to soccer does not fundamentally alter the game and that it merely alters their preferred style.
That is why my suggestions specifically focused on luck and skill. It is objectively better to have the game be more skill-based than luck-based and stats can track skill more than luck, I think
Alright, point taken. But the rate of making a penalty kick is high compared to the relative worth of the point. The low scoring in soccer magnifies the ability of luck to greatly affect the outcome versus a basketball game where consistency takes into account the skill of one team more than luck. I’m not saying luck doesn’t happen, but if you luck into a couple baskets here and there, there’s more than enough time and scoring for the other team to, using their skill, recover from that. In soccer, if it comes down to PK’s, you get 5 chances and may not even use them all if the goalie reads the kick right.
That’s not the point of the topic. The point is how soccer can be changed to appeal to Americans. I readily acknowledge that it is the most popular sport in the world and if I had to objectively decide what sports rules out of all sports to change with the goal of appealing to the most people, soccer would be lower on the list. But this is how I would personally enjoy it being played
What I meant was that people are familiar with the rules that have been in place throughout its history and changing it would be unfamiliar territory if those changes have never been implemented. Like if every player got to use their hand once in a game or something
So to reiterate what I said before, get rid of PK’s, but increase the size of the goal for more scoring. I dislike the inherent luck of the PK’s, but I also dislike the low scoring. A bigger goal would fix both of that
Alright, I won’t fight the premise then. I think 0-0 games should result in no points. To offset that, soccer should eliminate the possibility of 0-0 games. The reason why I think that’s better is because I find 0-0 games boring and pointless no matter what happens in the game, with the emphasis that I understand its not pointless in the context of how soccer teams are ranked in a league or tournament, but in fact pointless TO ME in terms of enjoyment and determining a definitive winner in each game. A 0-0 game will always, to me, be worse than any 7-6 game you can conceive of, even if you replaced the players with monkeys or one ref simply gave points to a team for looking at him funny
My contention is that there should never be a 0-0 game. In that sense, it doesn’t matter what the average score is. So long as there is one 0-0 game, it harms soccer in my eyes.
I think that’s a weakness of soccer, and that by your logic, I would suggest then that they lower the points given to a winning team and eliminate ties so that wins would still count, but less due to parity
Will you honestly answer the 2nd question? Can you admit that you are simply biased towards your style of play and none of my suggestions are detrimental to the game, only detrimental to your preferences?
I’ll ask you to not fight the hypothetical. If ties are valuable because of how it affects rankings, are they still valuable if they don’t affect rankings and a tournament final can result in a tie? Would you still appreciate ties as much as you do now?
In my American eyes, it doesn’t matter how you amend the rules to take ties into account, all I see is the tie. Instead of creating a system that takes ties into account in order to make ties valuable, you should eliminate ties in the first place so as not to have to do that. Therefore, my premise was that if you think its valuable inherently, let me test that by hypothesizing that a winner of a tournament like the World Cup could be split between two teams due to a tie. Do you still value it then? Or do you see my point that ties are not something to celebrate?
Even with replays it’s often impossible to tell if a player was fouled, brought down honestly or dived. Unworkable.
Tried that. Had two extra officials in the last Euros, or the Europa League, or something a couple of years ago. Didn’t help, got rid.
Also a World Youth Cup a few year ago played without the offside rule. Didn’t work.
We tried the sudden-death extra time, golden goal as it was called, didn’t work.
Dissent is already an offence and the referee can issue yellow card for it at his own discretion.
Penalties are great drama, and objectively the best way to separate two teams still level after 120 minutes. Other than replays, perhaps, but good luck with that.
No. According to Wikipedia, it has a lower average attendance in America than Ice Hockey, and also lacks its international appeal. Basketball is, therefore, quite popular in the US and completely obscure almost everywhere else.
As with America, the President of FIFA get elected by throwing money around and buying votes. Nonetheless, his support for your position effectively removes any possibility that it could be a good idea.
Obstruction is already against the rules, maintaining possession isn’t, and never will be. Maybe some defenders should learn to tackle.
In fact one of my first memories is of Lee Dixon being awarded a free kick for obstruction playing for Arsenal against Auxerre in the Cup Winners’ Cup.
You decrease shots from distance by putting pressure on the ball, not by maintaining a high line.
As is real football.
That’s not real tennis.
The trouble is, in some cases, you get something similar to what the Rugby Union World Cup used to do: the last tiebreaker was, “If it’s not the final, toss a coin; if it is the final, declare both teams co-champions/joint champions (and worry about what to do with the trophy later).”
MLS’s predecessor, NASL, had a line on each half of the field about 30 yards from the goal line, and offside was not called between the two lines. In fact, I read a story about a match played in England in (I think) the 1920s where they tried a similar rule for one half, and in the other half, reduced the number of defenders needed in order to be onside from three (which is what it was back then) to two.
As for making the goals larger, I can think of one reason why it might be a good idea now; goalkeepers have gotten far more athletic over the past few decades. I can also think of a reason why it won’t happen; cost - you’re telling pretty much every club and university (and high school, if they use full-size goals) to buy new goals.
If you really want to increase scoring without replacing all of the goals (and without doing something drastic like getting rid of goalkeepers - increase the number of players per side, but nobody is allowed to use their hands), here’s an idea: allow for unlimited substitution - you name up to 18 players (no more than 15 of whom can be non-goalkeepers) who can play in a match, but (possibly except for goalkeepers) they can be taken out and put in any number of times. (Further rule: a player who receives a yellow card must be removed immediately, but can come back in - similar to ice hockey’s penalty box or rugby’s “sin bin,” but there’s no minimum sit-out time.)
Wow, hope you’re having fun kicking around that straw man. Weird, too, since your reply to **amanset **below seems so reasonable. Maybe you honestly misunderstood my position? This was from a couple pages back:
Later in the thread I suggested making the goal three feet (less than a meter) wider and one foot higher (to keep it exactly the same shape).
Yes, so much this. Your summary here seems eminently reasonable, but I guess in the ideas of many it is absurd, beyond the pale. :rolleyes:
I don’t know about unlimited in&out substitutions. It may turn the stoppages in soccer into something look and dull, like the NFL between plays. It likely wouldn’t fly due to the effect it’d have on the flow of the game (even now the amount of time some subs take to get off the field is annoying).
However, an increase in the number of subs per game for the World Cup may have potential. As pointed out up thread, the amount of goals scored in league play hasn’t really gone down all that much. And likely the biggest benefit to having more talented players in a side is that they can all mark opposing star players (hence better defensive play). So, how about for World Cups alone increasing the max subs to 5. Endurance would still be important, but it would allow for fresher legs, especially when you have potential extra time. Or perhaps add 2 subs at the beginning of Extra Time for both teams to allow for more exciting play during the ET periods.
I mean you don’t want to change the game at “league level” for a problem that is really World Cup based?
And even if you are thinking, well, Americans like higher scores, here are the scores for this past weekend’s MLS games:
Philadelphia 3 - Colorado 3 (Colorado came back from 3-1 - though shoddy defending all game)
New York 4 - Columbus 1
Toronto FC 4 - Houston 2
Sporting KC 2 - Montreal 1
Chicago 1 - New England 0
Chivas USA 3 - Vancouver 1
LA Galaxy 1 - Real Salt Lake 0
Seattle 2 - Portland 0
Relatively high scores, comparatively, right? Perhaps that should be kept in mind that it will affect this league as well as all the rest for something that is a result of watching WC matches.
None of those games are high scoring *and *close *and *not a tie. It’s just one slate of games, but none of them strike me as presenting a satisfying scoring result in American terms. Had the Philly-Colorado game not been a tie, that’s pretty decent. But the tie kills it, no matter how many goals were scored. Toronto-Houston and Sporting KC-Montreal look like the most satisfying.
I think we’ve already established you’d like a different sort of game than most soccer fans in this country. That’s fine, but that’s not going to happen in the MLS. You are free to start your own league with your own rules.
MLS already tried to get the goal enlarged. Your assumption that they are totally against me seems misplaced.
You did note the fact that they got slapped down, right? MLS also tried to introduce a countdown clock as well, which they abandoned after a few years.
I shall quote the Big Lebowski:
“So you have no frame of reference here, Donny. You’re like a child who wanders into the middle of a movie and wants to know…”
After attempts at “Americanizing” the game and almost completely screwing themselves (resulting in the folding of two original clubs), the MLS went more for embracing the international game. It is when they did that that the league flourished. They are not going down the Americanizing well again.
If you followed the MLS, instead of walking into the middle of the movie, you’d know that.